Two images in particular suggest the complex tensions of the Caspian region. The first shows the Flame Towers, the tallest buildings in Baku, Azerbaijan, emerging from the city in their shiny, metallic symmetry. The surface of each tower is covered with countless L.E.D. screens that, when illuminated at night, give the impression of flames licking the nocturnal sky. They speak loudly of wealth, privilege, and status, much like the statement architecture that characterizes certain oil-rich Gulf states. The second image captures a spectacle that was only accidentally man-made: at Darvaza, Turkmenistan, a seventy-metre-wide hole in the earth, nicknamed “Door to Hell,” that has been ablaze since 1971. It is believed that it was created when Soviet geologists were drilling in the deserts of Turkmenistan and the sand collapsed under them; experts set fire to the escaping gas to try to burn it off. The imposing crater, emitting noxious fumes into the sky above, terrifying in its elemental beauty, is as apt a symbol as any for the fraught surge toward modernity that oil has precipitated across the Caspian region.