Evan Gershkovich in Conversation with David Remnick

In March 2023, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was meeting a source 900 miles east of Moscow when masked FSB agents stormed in, blindfolded him, and took him away. Charged with espionage and imprisoned in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison, he became a pawn in a geopolitical conflict.

Gershkovich had arrived in Moscow five years earlier, drawn to the country his parents fled in the 1970s and determined to report on Russia. But after the invasion of Ukraine, the rules protecting Western journalists disappeared.

During 16 months in captivity, Gershkovich continued reporting, chronicling Russia’s prison system while awaiting a fate decided at the highest levels of government. His memoir, This Cursed Beautiful Land, recounts his arrest, imprisonment, and the historic prisoner exchange that secured his freedom.

Now a Berlin-based foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal and a 2025 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Evan Gershkovich joins New Yorker editor David Remnick in conversation upon the publication of his long-awaited memoir.