War and Punishment
- Author Mikhail Zygar
- Narrator Richard Attlee
- Publisher Orion
- Run Time 15 hours and 45 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre International relations, Politics and government, Society and Social Sciences, War crimes.
Titles Purchased
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Price p/Title
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What to expect
How did a German monk's fear of the Ottoman Empire drive him to invent the fiction of a united Russian world? How did corny spy novels about a 'Soviet James Bond' inspire Vladimir Putin to join the KGB? How did Alexander Pushkin's admiration for a poem by Lord Byron end with him slandering the legendary chief of the Cossacks? And how did Putin underestimate a rising TV comic named Volodymyr Zelensky, failing to see that his satire had become deadly serious, and that his country would be a joke no longer?
A noted expert on the Kremlin with unparalleled access to hundreds of players in the current conflict - from politicians to oligarchs, gangsters to comedians (not least Zelensky himself) - Zygar chronicles the power struggles from which today's politics grew, and digs out the essential truths from behind layers of seductive legend. By surveying the strange, complex record of Russo-Ukrainian relations, War and Punishment reveals exactly how the largest nation on Earth lost its senses. A work of history can't undo the past or transform the present, but sometimes it can shape the future.
In fact, that's how the story begins.
Critics Review
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A superb account of all that led to Vladimir Putin’s brutal and misbegotten invasion . . . Provides an ardent, informed understanding of the present
The New Yorker -
The pattern of anti-Ukrainian persecution repeats from one era to the next, in Zygar’s haunting telling . . . a sorry tale of big brother chauvinism and oppression. He seeks to demolish, myth by myth, the “imperial mindset” that led to the current conflict . . . A fine book
Observer -
Excellent . . . Cleverly weaves the story of independent Ukraine with an amusing look at the career as a comedian and actor of its president, Volodymyr Zelensky . . . Although a committed supporter of Ukrainian independence, Zygar is honest about Ukraine’s record in the past three decades. While other recent works sympathetic to the Ukrainian cause elide over the epic corruption there, Zygar is clear that before Zelensky was elected Ukraine was near to being a failed state
Sunday Times -
A sweeping, ambitious and impassioned chronicle… makes for compelling reading with its searing portrayal of the “long road to war”. It’s a fiery, informed reckoning of past and present relations… A bold prediction from a brave writer.
Irish Times -
Zygar demolishes Putin’s myths about Ukraine with a fury born out of shame at what is being done in his country’s name. It is just possible to dream that, one day, War and Punishment will be taught in Russian schools in place of the Kremlin’s deadly lies.
OLIVER BULLOUGH, author of BUTLER TO THE WORLD -
Why is my country fascist – and what is my role in that? For Russia to ever change these are the questions Russians will need to ask. Zygar does it with a searing mix of history and self-reflection.
PETER POMERANTSEV, author of THIS IS NOT PROPAGANDA
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