I majored in Russian and Middle Eastern Studies in college, which at the time meant that I was a hapless student caught among the passionately divided politics of not one but two different university departments. It was the era when the Soviet Union had begun to crumble—the Berlin Wall would come down the year after I graduated. The Russian department was bitterly divided among the pro- and anti- Soviet camps, and I’m afraid the faculty expended much effort denouncing each other’s theories and sources that might have been better spent on the students. Likewise the Middle East looked very similar to what I’m seeing on CNN. Beruit was a mass of rubble after ten years of civil war in Lebanon. Thousands of dispossessed wandered the roads and it was hard to tell the difference between legitimate governments (in exile or otherwise) and terrorist organizations. In such a climate, most of the books written about the area were out of date almost before they came off the presses, and I found myself looking for “the real Russia” and “the real Middle East” in its fiction instead. Because what is a country without its people? And the best way to understand people is to listen to their stories. So below are some books that have helped me on my various literary journeys through a troubled land.