Where is your nonfiction section please.
Russians Among Us, by Gordon Corera (Amazon / SecondSale.com) In July 2010, on the tarmac of the Vienna International Airport, the biggest spy swap since the Cold War took place. Ten Russian undercover agents who had been living in the US, some representing a new era in espionage by using their own names instead of... Continue Reading →
Book review: Dressed for a Dance in the Snow, by Monika Zgustova (Amazon / Book Depository) I am not that woman. It must be someone else who is suffering. I could never withstand it. Monika Zgustova, a Czech author based in Spain, gives voices to female former Gulag prisoners (and in one case, a woman... Continue Reading →
Book review: Black Earth City, by Charlotte Hobson (Amazon / Book Depository) 'You must understand,' said Rita Yurievna, 'that in Russian, verbs are not only about action. They are also about the experience. Think how different it feels if you walk down a street every morning of your life, and if you walk down it... Continue Reading →
Book review: Stalin's Daughter, by Rosemary Sullivan (Amazon / Book Depository) “What would it mean to be born Stalin’s daughter, to carry the weight of that name for a lifetime and never be free of it?” “I want to explain to you, he broke my life.” Even writing a biography showing the many sides of... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Unwomanly Face of War, by Svetlana Alexievich Amazon Yet another book about war? What for? There have been a thousand wars—small and big, known and unknown. And still more has been written about them. But…it was men writing about men—that much was clear at once. Everything we know about war we know... Continue Reading →
Book review: A Mountain of Crumbs, by Elena Gorokhova Book Depository This memoir has one of the most beautiful and intensely evocative openings I've read in a long time: I wish my mother had come from Leningrad, from the world of Pushkin and the tsars, of granite embankments and lace ironwork, of pearly domes buttressing... Continue Reading →
Book review: Ask Baba Yaga, by Taisia Kitaiskaia The Hairpin is one of those sites I always mean to read, then don't. I've read some great pieces there, also some that are too hipster for my taste. Apparently one long-running feature of the site was an advice column, featuring the typical everyday problems of life,... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Man Without a Face, by Masha Gessen Amazon / Book Depository "Imagine you have a country and no one to run it. This was the predicament that Boris Yeltsin and his inner circle thought they faced in 1999." What do we really know about Vladimir Putin? What beyond the carefully orchestrated and... Continue Reading →
Book review: The Day Will Pass Away, by Ivan Chistyakov (Amazon / Book Depository) So even my inner word recedes day by day into eternity until it reaches freezing point. You start believing they can make you lose all emotion. Yet every day brings you nearer to freedom. Only, what kind of path are you walking to get there?... Continue Reading →
Book review: Putin Country, by Anne Garrels (Amazon / Book Depository) "When the meteor hit Chelyabinsk, it blazed across the sky, spewed out its shards, and then sank quietly into a lake. That's what many hoped the breakup of the Soviet Union would be like. It would end with a compliant Russia as benign as the rock... Continue Reading →
What's Nonfiction? 