Excerpt: Gershkovich writes FSB sought to lure him into trap
The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Reads newsletter dated September 26, 2026 has published an exclusive excerpt from reporter Evan Gershkovich’s new book “This Cursed Beautiful Land.” The newsletter frames the book as an account of his 16 months in Russian custody on what it describes as false espionage charges.
The excerpt opens with Gershkovich’s first-person account of his initial response to the accusations. “It was easier to imagine that this was a simulation, a game,” Gershkovich writes. “Surely they didn’t really think that I was a spy.”
The excerpt also recounts how Gershkovich “would later learn that the FSB, the successor to the Soviet-era KGB, had been looking for suitable ways to lure him into a trap,” the newsletter’s framing of the excerpt states.
The newsletter describes the excerpt as Gershkovich’s search for “answers about his arrest while reporting in Russia,” drawn from his book “This Cursed Beautiful Land.”
The September 26 edition of Weekend Reads, edited by Cristina Lourosa-Ricardo, also features pieces on affordable first homes, the Cotswolds region, the etiquette of bringing coffee to a job interview, premium credit cards, VIP airport services, AI use among older Americans, the expansion of caviar into mainstream markets, Pilates among men, the fall television season, and cases for the iPhone 18 Pro.
The newsletter describes itself as “a weekly look at our most colorful, thought-provoking and original feature stories on the business of life” and as “a showcase for the wide range of great feature writing at WSJ.”