Thomas de Waal

Thomas de Waal
De Waal at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, 20 June 2013
Born	1966 (age 57–58) Nottingham, UK
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Occupation	Journalist
Notable work	Black Garden (2003)

Thomas Patrick Lowndes de Waal (born 1966) is a British journalist and writer on the

Life and career

Thomas De Waal was born in

De Waal is the author of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War (New York, 2003), a book widely referred to in the context of discussing the Karabakh conflict and its genesis.^[1]

As a journalist, de Waal has reported for, amongst others, the

In his position as Senior Fellow for Carnegie Europe, de Waal has written extensively on the Caucasus, with commentary on ongoing events, on breakaway regions, and also larger publications on the region, including books introducing the Caucasus region, and, in The Great Catastrophe (2015), on the aftermath and politics of the Armenian Genocide, also highlighting efforts by Armenians, Kurds, and Turks to come to terms with this history.[5] In 2014, de Waal had provided the introduction to Two Close Peoples, Two Distant Neighbours, a book collecting the major writings on Armenian-Turkish relations by Hrant Dink.^[6]

Next to the Carnegie Europe website, his analysis has been published in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, and various other outlets.^[7][8] Like other prominent commentators on the region, De Waal has been criticized for some of the analysis he has put forward.^[9]

In 2023, de Waal published a translation of Osip Mandelstam's Tristia.

Work on Russia and Chechnya

De Waal has repeatedly worked on and reported from Chechnya. He is the co-author of Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus (New York, 1998).

In 2006 the

De Waal has written the introduction to Anna Politkovskaya's first book in English, A Dirty War (2004), which describes the atrocities and abuses of that conflict.^[13]

Other biographical background

De Waal is the brother of Africa specialist Alex de Waal, barrister John de Waal, and potter and writer Edmund de Waal.

Through his grandmother, Elisabeth de Waal (née Ephrussi), Thomas de Waal is related to the

• Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus. NYU Press. 1999.
  ISBN 0814731325
  .
• Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War. New York University Press. 2003.
  ISBN 0814719449
  .
• The Caucasus: An Introduction. Oxford University Press. 2010.
  ISBN 978-0195399769
  . (2nd edition, 2018)
• Great Catastrophe: Armenians and Turks in the Shadow of Genocide. Oxford University Press. 2015.
  ISBN 978-0199350698
  .
• Beyond Frozen Conflict: Scenarios for the Separatist Disputes of Eastern Europe. Center for European Policy Studies. 2020.
  ISBN 978-1538144176
  .
• Tristia, by Osip Mandelstam: Translated from the Russian by Thomas de Waal. Arc Publications. 2023.
  ISBN 9781910345931
  .