This collection of essays reflects the personal experience of a Ukrainian intellectual engaged, since his Soviet-time youth, in a painstaking but fascinating process of the both cultural and political 'Europeanization' of his country. The title refers, ironically, to the notorious Chancellor Metternich's quip that Asia presumably begins at the eastern fence of his garden (or, as another apocryphal version maintains, at the eastern end of the Viennese Landstrasse). This is a story of both exclusion and inclusion, of walls and fences, but also of a longing for freedom and a quest for solidarity. It is a book on different ways of being a 'European'-at both the collective and individual level,-despite various challenges or, perhaps, thanks to them.

Autorentext
Dr. Mykola Riabchuk studied history and literary theory in Moscow in 19851988. During the 1990s, he co-edited the leading Ukrainian intellectual journals Vsesvit, Suchasnist, and Krytyka. Since 2012, he has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Political and Nationalities' Studies of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Riabchuk served as a Fulbright Fellow at Penn State University, the University of Texas, and George Washington University, Reagan-Fascell Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, DC, Reuters Fellow at Oxford, Milena Jesenska and EURIAS Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, Ramsay Tompkins Professor at the University of Alberta, and Ukrainian Studies Fellow at Harvard. Riabchuk is Honorary President of the Ukrainian PEN Center and Jury Head for the Angelus International Literary Award. His previous books include From 'Little Russia' to Ukraine (Krytyka / Universitas 2000; L'Harmattan / Markovic 2003); Two Ukraines: Real Borders and Virtual Wars (Krytyka 2003; KEW 2004; Örökség Kultúrpolitikai Intézet 2015); Die reale und die imaginierte Ukraine (Suhrkamp 2005); Gleichschaltung: Authoritarian Consolidation in Ukraine, 2010-2012 (KIS 2012); Postcolonial Syndrome (KIS 2011; KEW 2015).