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Roman Ungern von Sternberg was a Baltic aristocrat, a violent, headstrong youth posted to the wilds of Siberia and Mongolia before the First World War. After the Bolshevik Revolution, the Baron – now in command of a lethally effective rabble of cavalrymen – conquered Mongolia, the last time in history a country was seized by an army mounted on horses. He was a Kurtz-like figure, slaughtering everyone he suspected of irreligion or of being a Jew. And his is a story that rehearses later horrors in Russia and elsewhere. James Palmer’s book is an epic recreation of a forgotten episode and will establish him as a brilliant popular historian.
James Palmer lives in Beijing. He has interviewed many survivors of the Tangshan earthquake and of the Communist Party struggles of that crucial year. His books include The Bloody White Baron, which was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 2008, and The Death of Mao, which John Simpson called ‘The best account of Mao’s last year that we have.’
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