A book blog about Russia in English-language fiction
(Part one of this review is here)
Black Sun is set in a world on the turn.
It is a thriller bathed throughout in its titular saturnine radiance, emanating from RDS-220, the Tsar Bomba – to this day the most powerful explosion ever created by humankind.
(Part two of this review is here)
As a thriller, excellent. From the Russia-in-fiction perspective, first class.
Black Sun is a superior and original whodunnit set in the closed city of Arzamas-16 in October 1961, the week in which the Soviet Union tested the biggest nuclear weapon ever exploded.
Continue reading(Part one of this review is here)
Tom Bradby’s Secret Service goes for a straight down the line buy-in to the standard thriller-writer depiction of Putin-era Russia in the second decade of the 21st century.
(Part two of this review is here)
A quick review of what was for Russia in Fiction a quick summer read. If you fancy a spy/political thriller for the beach or the pool, this will do the trick.
Secret Service is the first in a trilogy written by Tom Bradby, a nationally known journalist and newscaster in the UK.
Part two of this review is here.
Sam Golod’s heroine, Natalie, is a young English woman spending a post-degree year in St Petersburg in 1992, in the chaos of uncertainty and reckless opportunity of that astonishing time of state collapse.
Part one of this review is here, part three is here,
As readers of this blog know, the reviews here have a two-fold focus —what is the book like? And what about its representation of Russia in fiction?
Sam Golod is a novel with a strong sense of time and place. It is set in St Petersburg in the early 1990s.
Part two of this review is here.
Sophia Creswell’s Sam Golod (1996) is one of those works written by English writers who spent time in Russia during the extraordinary 1990s and sought to describe in prose those searingly memorable years.
Part one of this review is here.
Jason Matthews comes to espionage fiction as a member of the ‘former spy’ school of writers. He is ex-CIA. The backcover blurb on Red Sparrow has veteran US thriller writer Nelson DeMille proclaiming that
Jason Matthews is not making it up; he has lived this life and this story, and it shows on every page.
Nelson De Mille, on Red Sparrow
Part two of this review is here.
Jason Matthews was a newcomer to the spy fiction genre when Red Sparrow was published in 2013. Within five years, Red Sparrow was the first in the Dominika Egorova trilogy and was a movie starring Jennifer Lawrence, replete with graphic violence and what are best described as ‘scenes of a sexual nature’.
(Part one of this review is here)
The Spike is structured around the story of an American journalist, Bob Hockney, who travels the path from youthful mould-breaker, through celebrated scoop getter, to dedicated truth seeker.
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