Man is a wolf to man, according to The Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevskii’s The Brothers Karamazov. He has no inclination to be good, but is […]
Month: March 2013
Putin, a modern day Stalin
Masha Gessen, the Russian journalist, wrote a very important book last year, published by Granta in the UK. The Man Without a Face is a devastating portrait […]
Screen heroes under totalitarian rule
Totalitarianism is a political system in which the state holds total authority over society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life […]
The marks of a thief-in-law
Brought to popular western culture in the contemporary film Eastern Promises directed by David Cronenberg, and now on display at the Saatchi Gallery in the […]
Why I wrote “The Distinguished Assassin”
As a postgraduate student of Russian literature at the University College London School of Slavonic and East European Studies in 1995, I will never forget […]