Tom Nairn writes:
Wright’s style carries the reader into heartfelt sympathy with one personality or episode after another. Just as he conjured up Tyneham, the village that ‘died for England’ by being turned into a military exercise area, here he makes us identify with, among others, the Greek-Romanian writer Panaït Istrati. ‘Waiter in a cabaret, pastrycook, locksmith, coppersmith, mechanic, workman, labourer, wharf porter, servant, sandwich man, sign painter, house decorator, journalist, photographer’, as Romain Rolland described him, Istrati was a critic of Soviet society who was denounced by the Comintern denigration and, like Victor Serge, abused as an ‘anti-Moscow anarchist’. Visitors to the Soviet Union touring ‘their own ardent preconceptions’ were often reminded that eggs have to be broken to make an omelette. It was Istrati who came up with the best riposte: ‘All right. I can see the broken eggs. Where’s this omelette of yours?’ Iron Curtain’s merit lies partly in its rediscovery of such characters, who refused to conform to the stereotypes on either side of the curtain.

Oxford | hardback 488 pp. |ISBN: 9780199231508