Description: Nick Megoran explores the process of building independent nation-states in post-Soviet Central Asia through the lens of the boundary between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, using a combination of political, historical, ethnographic, and geographic frames to shed new light on this process.
Review Quotes: Biographies' of political borders yield fresh insights on nationalism, argues Megoran in this morally compelling, multi-layered work. With over two decades of local language fieldwork, he weaves a thick account of the troubled boundary between two post-Soviet Central Asian states, showing how 'interethnic conflict' actually results from particular internal political decisions.-- "Morgan Y. Liu, The Ohio State University"