Hinterlands is a timely work of reportage from the borderlands of Europe, Russia, and Turkey, where brewing conflicts mark a significant fault line in shifting geopolitics.
Mark your calendars. Hinterlands by Hannah Lucinda Smith is in presale (the best time to buy a book), and ready to hit the bookshelf on July 21, 2026. Our anticipation is palpable. Published by Liveright | W.W. Norton, this non-fiction account of Eurasian countries is already making waves with early readers. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s on the cover from the publisher’s official description to early reviews that will help you pre-order your copy ASAP. Let’s dive in!
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In This Spotlight On Hinterlands
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About Hinterlands
Hannah Lucinda Smith, a Pulitzer grantee and acclaimed foreign correspondent, has devoted well over a decade to intrepid, on-the-ground reporting where few dare travel: the small, often disputed territories at the edges of Europe and Russia. There, Smith finds, the influence of Vladimir Putin and his favored strongmen—along with Turkish president and regional lynchpin Recep Tayyip Erdogan—fan territorial disputes and destabilize already fragile democracies.
Hinterlands offers a rare glimpse into the ghost towns of Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh, the cryptocurrency farms of Transnistria, the brittle border communities of Bosnia and its Republika Srpska, and the enclaves of Northern Cyprus that Russian oligarchs call home. In rarely seen places in Crimea and the Caucasus, frontiers have shifted and new countries have been made. Informed by her encounters with politicians, combatants, and the ordinary people caught in the crosshairs, Smith paints a vivid portrait of the places where geopolitical alliances are forged and broken, where the violent ambitions of dictators are most keenly felt.
This indispensable account of events in the gray zones of Eurasia gives vital context to our rapidly changing world and sounds a clear-eyed, urgent warning: We ignore the hinterlands at our own peril. What happens inside them has the power to redraw the fault lines of a new Cold War and shape the future of the West.
Praise for Hinterlands
“Compelling and disquieting. Do the keys to the future lie in the Hinterlands, where new frontiers are already being drawn?”—Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che: A Revolutionary Life and To Lose a War: The Fall and Rise of the Taliban
[Hinterlands is] “Deftly drawn.…Gripping and thought-provoking….From geopolitical hotspots like Istanbul, bubbling with intrigue, repression, and hope, to the long-suffering, neglected backwaters of the Balkans, Caucasus, and what we once called the Levant….Hannah Lucinda Smith’s characters leap from the page.”—Edward Lucas, author of The New Cold War: Putin’s Russia and the Threat to the West
[Hinterlands is] “An important book which provides a compelling reminder of Europe’s half-forgotten border conflicts, each of them capable of erupting once again into war.”—Sam Miller, author of Migrants: The Story of Us All
About Hannah Lucinda Smith, Author of Hinterlands
Hannah Lucinda Smith is a writer, consultant and reporter for The Times and The Economist. A consistent Pulitzer grantee, she has also contributed to The Atlantic, Wired, and The Times Literary Supplement, among other publications. She is the author of Erdogan Rising and the cowriter of Zarifa. She is based in Istanbul.
During Hannah Lucinda Smith’s tenure at The Times as a correspondent in Turkey, she covered conflicts, a coup attempt and the rise of controversial president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. During her time in the country, she has also reported from inside rebel-held Syria, on the front lines of the battle against Isis in Iraq, and joined the mass movement of migrants on their journey to Europe in 2015.
You can connect with Hannah Luncinda Smith on LinkedIn and X (though LitStack includes this link to Hanna Lucinda Smith on X, we do not endorse the site nor do we encourage you to spend time on the site).
Source: Publisher
Publisher: Liveright | W.W. Norton
ISBN Hardcover 9781324098713
Pub Date: July 21, 2026
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As an affiliate of Bookshop.org, Malaprop’s, Books-A-Million, Audiobooks.com, Chirp, 2nd & Charles, Amazon, NameHero, Envato, and Place-It, LitStack may earn a commission—at no cost to you—when you purchase through our affiliate links. We appreciate the brands we work with, and also appreciate that using our affiliate links may help you find your next great read, a book or two or more, in whatever form, while simultaneously supporting LitStack. When you use our affiliate links, you help keep LitStack running—and for that, we thank you.
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