Customer Reviews

Lost Province: Adventures in a Moldovan Family

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Henighan's strenghtes is the interesting way he describes his experiences with the Moldovans and that he does it in a way that anyone that have visited Moldova can easily recognize. He partly achives this recognition by using stereotypes, making it easy for anyone that has been in Moldova to recognize the type of people (the girls who wants to marry a rich foreigner, the teachers who are small dictators, the Moldovans poor knowledge about the world outside Moldova, the dodgy Russian-speaking biznizman etc), though might oversimplify "the Moldovans" for the reader who lacks this background. All in all I will say he succeed with this approach of describing the Moldovans though.


The main weeknesses of Henighan's book, is his obvious lack of background-information, being written sources and experience with Romania and Russia/Ukraine, needed in order to interpret his experiences. Unlike Tony Hawks in Playing the Moldovans at tennis, who also obviously lack backgroundinformation on Moldova but gets away with it by using humour (including self-irony), Henighan fails to come through as a trustworthy writer because the combinatation of big holes in background-knowledge and lack of self-irony at times makes his writing prententious or simply does not interpret a situation correct.


Some examples
-He travels by bus from London to Lviv and tells about that while towns like Prague and Budapest has a "return to Europe atmosphere", Lviv is an example of that Ukraine, Russia and Belarus is a result of Moscow centralism and not Europe. Moldova he claims, is different because it was originally a part of Romaina and initially not a part of the Soviet Union.

The fact is that Lviv is a typical old Habsburger town, that used to be part of the same Austria and Hungary as Budapest, Prague and Krakow. Lviv is Galicia and was added to the Soviet Union at exactly the same time as Moldova, and if its historical roots to Romania makes Moldova European (few people I have spoken to described Moldova as "European"), why is Lviv (with its historical roots to Poland) not equally Eropean? The explaination is probably his limited backgroundinformation on Lviv (that is not so bad really, his book is about Moldova) and that he arrived very tired to Lviv after a long tiring bustrip from the UK (but why include his uninspired mood in the book). Doesn't he have a publisher that can explain and correct a few things?

-when he writes that except from a few part time teachers he didn't meet anyone under the age of 35 that he would descrive as gainfully employed is is at one hand probably right. On the other he simply does not care - or is not able to? - explain that the reason for that is that hardly any teacher, doctor or other academic earn enough to live of in Moldova - you eather "buy and sell things", emigrate to better paid jobs abroad or receive money from relatives working abroad. This is a great chance to give the reader insight, but he does not have the backgoundinformation to give it.


-When the word "bizniz" appears in a sentence in Romanian, in a context where the writers Moldovan freind talks about more or less realisitic or shady plans for earning a lot of money "by buying and selling things", it is rather a word borrowed from Russian than from English. Because of his lack of knowledge of Russian language and daily life, he simply misunderstands.


-Another misunderstanding is when he refers to a Moldovans freind's description of the Brezhnev years as the worst time of the Soviet Union, as the time where the Russians behaved worst towards the Moldovians. This is excatly the same story as most Russians and Ukrainians tell, they simply have the same experiences living in the same society.


There are a lot of theese examples


The other main weekness of his book is that he is not capable of hold his personal opinions back, even when he has a limited background for his views and - not to mention - he has told us about his view on a topic 5980 times before.


The most striking example is his obsession about the language question. At the same time as he brings up his indignation about the use of Russian and the cyrillic alphabet in Moldova in virtually every chapter, he tells us that he only by coincidece finds out that Romanian traditionally was written in cyrillic script (a lot of the classics of Romanian litterature is) and that this is because Romania also is Russian orthodox. Further he complins that the Russian speakers can not read lathin letters, while anyone who have a minimum of experience with Russian speakers know that they always read lathin letters (and use them for some purposes in their daily written language), it is the rest of us that don't normally read cyrillic letters.


All in all though and despite the weeknesses mentioned, the books gives an interesting story about the Moldovians and their daily life if your pleasure of reading is not ruined by the mentioned weeknesses. Please correct the factual errors and misunderstandings if there is ever published a revised edition though

I'm so glad I read Lost Province before going to work in Moldova last year. This book is about living with a Moldovan family and it really makes you feel how Molodovan people live and act. I also read Charles King's The Moldovans, which is great for the history but is kind of a college-course book. Tony Hawks is funny, but only about half the book is about Moldova and his book is really about being an English guy who doesn't understand the rest of the world. Lost Province is about Moldovans. It shows you how hard their lives are and why they act like they do. Henighan is great at connecting the little things that happen in a family with the big picture. His take on the language issues is very influenced by the fact that he's Canadian, which is a bit weird at first, but once you get used to it, it's kind of interesting. I remembered Dora and Senya and Andrei for a long time after reading Lost Province, and when I got to Chisinau, Moldova I kept meeting people like them over and again. Moldova is a small country, but it deserves a small gem of a book like Lost Province.

Stephen Henighan begins by telling us that he was working on his doctoral thesis at Oxford. One would hope after introducing himself in this way that his writing would be better. It is not. It is uneven at best. Actual writing ability aside, the book is unbelievably pretentious. The author has a world view so narrow that it precludes his ability to describe Moldova in any way that is essentially meaningful.

There is interesting information about the tremendous difficulties and politics of language, and yet the information still seems skewed by his rigid world view. The information about Transnistria is interesting, but it is in no way documented and it is hard to tell if he did actual research or if the information simply came from stories he heard.

And lastly, the reader can only feel an overwhelming sorrow and sympathy for any Moldovan unfortunate enough to have to deal with him. Bound up in his own self-righteous, narrow-minded, and essentially selfish way of thinking, his self described behavior to the Moldovans he encounters is, to put it mildly, unfortunate.

At least Americans are no longer alone in their reputation for being boorish and condescending travelers. Henighan has added Canadians to that list - at least in Moldova.

If you want actual information based on real research about Moldova, read Charles King.

If you want a very insightful book that is also very funny, read "Playing the Moldovans at Tennis" by Tony Hawks. Interestingly enough, while Tony Hawks has no pretentions about being a 'great' author, his actual writing is better and more lucid than Henighan's. It also has the advantage of being hysterically funny.

I bought this for a research paper, and the author's personal point-of-view helped to make this book a very good source.

The vendor got this to me very quickly. Thank you so much!

The title of this book is perfect. Moldova certainly is a Lost Provence. Unfortunately this book is at least 10 years out of date. But for those interested in Moldova, it is one of the only books out there. It shows the heart, and the difficulties of life in this poor country. I read this book twice, and I remember many parts of it. For those just learning about Moldova this book along with Tony Hawks book, provides a nice contrast. Just like David Remnick's writings about Russia... I wished that this author would have stayed and kept on writing about Moldova.

Like any book, Lost Province has its supporters (like Kim from Africa) and its detractors (like J.L. Jordan). As the book's author, my concern is with J.O. Thorsnas's need to prove himself an "experienced CIS traveller." In his effort to show how much he knows, he distorts the book's contents by claiming "factual errors" that do not exist.

To take his examples one at a time--

*Thorsnas writes two long paragraphs about Lviv, Ukraine, which I supposedly misrepesent. Guess what? Lost Province (page 8) contains only one paragraph about the city. In his excessive reaction, Thorsnas overlooks the fact that, for a traveller from the West, entering the former USSR in 1994, it was the legacy of the very recent past of the Soviet Union --decaying factories, smog, socialist apartment blocks, weird coupons with many zeroes standing in for cash-- that hit you in the face. Yes, in the more distant past, Lviv was a Habsburg city; but that sure wasn't what you noticed in 1994. Now that these cities --Lviv, Cernivitsi--have been cleaned up and have become marginally more prosperous, the Habsburg legacy is once again discernible. But that was not the case at the time Lost Province opens.

*Thorsnas complains that "he simply does not care --or is not able to?--explain that...hardly any teacher, doctor or other academic earn[s] enough to live of[f[ in Moldova..." This is factually incorrect. On pages 34-35 I explain that men won't take jobs as teachers because the salary is too low (I even give the figure), and for this reason only women are unemployed as teachers. Contrary to Thorsnas's subsequent assertion, I illustrate through many of the stories in the book the fact that buying and selling in the informal sector or on the black market, or emigrating, are the only ways to earn a living for younger people. Once again, Thorsnas misrepresents the book's contents.

*Thorsnas berates me for not realizing that the Romanian slang "bisnita" comes from Russian, not from the English word "business." Here I can't argue with him, as I don't know Russian. But I do wonder which language the Russians got this word from? Could it be English?

*Thorsnas refers to a "misunderstanding" (?!) on my part in a scene where a Moldovan friend tells me that the Brezhnev years were the worst period in Soviet history for Moldovans. He seems to be making a claim that I don't realize that Russia, Ukraine and Moldova were all part of the U.S.S.R. at that time. It baffles me how he could think this, as the fact is referred to constantly in the book. Even in the scene where I supposedly "misunderstand" my friend, I cite this person as saying that Brezhnez was, "the worst Soviet leader" (page 57). Thorsnas's criticism depends, once again, on not telling the truth about the words that are on the page.

It's worth noting that when Lost Province was published in Moldova in a Romanian translation in 2005, Moldovan and Romanian journalists and commentators did not complain of factual errors. But then, unlike Thorsnas, they didn't feel that they had to prove that they were acquainted with the region.

--Stephen Henighan