Christian Salmon

Christian Salmon is a French author, researcher and media theorist whose book The Blumkin Project investigates the extraordinary true story of Yakov Blumkin, a Bolshevik revolutionary, spy, poet and adventurer whose life reads like the most improbable fiction. Salmon traces Blumkin's trajectory from his assassination of the German ambassador in Moscow in 1918 through his work as a Soviet intelligence agent, his friendship with Russian literary figures and his eventual execution on Stalin's orders. The Blumkin Project combines historical investigation with reflections on storytelling, truth and the nature of revolutionary violence. Salmon is a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and is known for his books on narrative, power and storytelling in politics, including Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind. His approach to Blumkin's story is as much about the challenge of reconstructing a hidden life as it is about the life itself. The audiobook edition brings his fascinating investigation of one of the most remarkable and least known figures of the Russian Revolution to listeners who appreciate historical non-fiction that challenges the boundaries between history, biography and literary investigation.