The Wizard of the Kremlin
Giuliano da Empoli, Willard Wood
£16.99
Mr B's review
Vadim Baranov is building a quietly successful career in the TV industry after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Then his friend, the oligarch Boris Berezovsky, introduces him to a young politician whose star is on the rise in Russia; Vladimir Putin.
Drawn to Putin’s steeliness, his understanding of power, his uncompromising focus, his unwillingness to bow to the oligarchs and their corrupt money, Baranov begins to plot The Tsar’s rise to the top. But as their project becomes darker and more aggressive, Baranov needs an exit strategy…
This is political fiction at its finest. An enthralling window into the corridors of Russian power, The Wizard of the Kremlin is also a provocative challenge to the Western view of the world that may leave you with more questions than answers. A cracking read and a prize winner in the author’s native France, it sits somewhere between the work of Robert Harris and Eric Vuillard’s The Order of the Day. (Tom M)
Description
THE INTERNATIONAL SENSATION – a stunning work of political fiction about the rise to power of Putin’s notorious spin doctor
‘A great book, casting light on the creatures that crawl and slither behind the Kremlin’s walls, on the mineral hardness of Putin, on the chaos engine that is his way of hurting us’ John Sweeney
‘An acute and timely dissection of Russian power, told through the eyes of a shadowy political advisor to Putin’ Financial Times
‘A fictional wandering through the dark corridors of the Kremlin’ The Times, Biggest Books of the Season
__________
They call him the Wizard of the Kremlin.
Working at the heart of Russian power, the enigmatic Vadim Baranov-Putin’s chief spin doctor-has used his background in experimental theatre and reality TV to turn the entire country into an avant-garde political stage.
Here truth and lies, news and propaganda, have become indistinguishable. But Vadim is growing increasingly entangled in the dark secret workings of the regime he has helped build, and now he is desperate to get out…
Propelling the reader from the fall of the Soviet Union to the invasion of Ukraine, this breathless story of politics and power has become an international sensation.
Publisher Review
‘A staggering account of the mental makeup and aggressive logic of Vladimir Putin… A story of great literary and historical force that you must read if you want to understand what, from here, seems incomprehensible’ – Liberation
‘A highly economical, well documented pageturner, describing twenty years in the corridors of Russian power, with a simple, seductive style and unmatched realism’ – Frederic Beigbeder
‘A journey into the dark heart of power’ – El Pais
‘You cannot put this book down… Fascinating and suffocating. A clinical analysis of the art of authoritarian rule’ – France Inter
‘An absolutely extraordinary novel… You feel you’re sitting on a sofa next to Putin, that you are inside his head’ – Patricia Martin
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