An incredible concept - The author recounts his imagined meeting, one night in Moscow, with the enigmatic Vadim Baranov, once an artist, producer of reality TV shows, and éminence grise of Vladimir Putin, nicknamed "the Tsar". What follows is an often surreal and bizarre look into the world of Putin's Kremlin.
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
This is Cruz Smith's final Arkady Renko, Moscow Investigator, book and I've loved them all since first reading Gorky Park. This one, obviously taking Renko into the Ukraine War was a fitting finale.
Included on The New Yorker Best Books of 2024 and World Literature Today Notable Translations of 2024. The Propagandist is about a historian exploring her family's WWII collaboration with the Nazis, and their coded discussions about the past. This is the French experience of war from the point of view of a collaborationist family.
New York Times bestselling author Paul French examines a controversial and revealing period in the early life of the legendary Wallis, Duchess of Windsor–her one year in China.
Before she was the Duchess of Windsor, Bessie Wallis Warfield was Mrs. Wallis Spencer, wife of Earl “Win” Spencer, a US Navy aviator. From humble beginnings in Baltimore, she rose to marry a man who gave up his throne for her. But what made Wallis Spencer, Navy Wife, the woman who could become the Duchess of Windsor? The answers lie in her one-year sojourn in China.
In her memoirs, Wallis described her time in China as her “Lotus Year,” referring to Homer’s Lotus Eaters, a group living in a state of dreamy forgetfulness, never to return home. Though faced with challenges, Wallis came to appreciate traditional Chinese aesthetics. China molded her in terms of her style and provided her with friendships that lasted a lifetime. But that “Lotus Year” would also later be used to damn her in the eyes of the British Establishment.
