Book Launch: The Lands Between by Andrew Giarelli

AAU Professor, Andrew Giarelli, celebrated the publication of his book The Lands Between, reading excerpts for the first time to guests at the AAU Library with event partner Megabooks. The book details Giarelli’s personal journey through Central Eastern Europe along with international affairs and cultural insights.  

From Prague and Vienna to the Austrian-Slovenian border, Giarelli chronicled major events including the 2015-16 Near Eastern immigration crisis, COVID’s impact from Prague to Trieste, and Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine with its resulting refugee crisis. Giarelli read from his time in Bratislava juxtaposed to Prague and about people he met along the way; talked about the issue of identity in slavic nations; and explored his experience being a foreigner in the region.

“It really is a chronicle of the last 12 plus years of contemporary history and a detailed map of Central Eastern Europe,” said AAU Professor Seth Rogoff who moderated the event.

Giarelli is a literature scholar, journalist, and senior lecturer in literature and journalism at AAU. He brings unique insight whose Ukraine-related reporting has appeared in U.S., Czech, Slovak, and Moldovan media. His book explores not just the recent upheavals, but the deep historical layers of this region shaped by Roman, Magyar, and Habsburg empires.

“The best kind of guide—mordant, observant, funny, empathetic, and idiosyncratic—he takes us along on his journeys of over a dozen years, starting in a sort of Wild West post-Soviet era, and ending, as he writes, when ‘plague descended, followed by war,’” commented Ben Yagoda, author of About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made.

Questions were opened to the audience—consisting of students, faculty, and those interested in the subject—and Giarelli spoke more about his history and travels. Giarelli explained that occasionally he has a personal contact or two, but his journalistic method often entails meeting locals at bars and cafes which is apparent in The Lands Between.
For a video recording of the reading head to the AAU Youtube page. Photos from the event can be found here.