Stalin’s Nose

Rory MacLean's uncle and aunt lived in a rambling house filled with animals in Potsdam. The author visited them as he passed through Berlin and when he told his aunt of his intention to travel along the line of the old Iron Curtain, she decided to accompany him - with her pet pig.

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Rory MacLean's uncle was a Soviet spy, his aunt a faded Austrian aristocrat. They lived in furious, frustrated retirement in a rambling house filled with animals in Potsdam, Prussia's Versailles. In their youth they stole secrets from Stalin and changed history. He visited them briefly as he passed through Berlin en route from the Baltic to the Black Sea. He was travelling along the line of the old Iron Curtain, writing about the Eastern European revolutions. But his aunt, a vivacious eccentric, would not be left behind. In her rattling Trabant, accompanied by her pet pig, they moved across the continent, following the threads of memory. Her remarkable East European relations - the angel of Prague, a Hungarian grave digger, a dying Romanian propagandist - help tie together the loose ends of her life. They picknicked at Auschwitz, they met Lenin's embalmer and they visited an impoverished Czech town. This book is a documentary of their journey and a history of Eastern Europe. Its portrayal of subjugated peoples at a time of great change, of their fears of the past and hopes for the future, illustrates the icy comedy of human existence.