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'A wonderful and compelling read about power, poetry, love, literature, terror and Russia.' Simon Sebag Montefiore 'Profoundly informed, incredibly suspenseful and heartbreaking.' Martin Cruz Smith
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Moscow, 1934. As thousands of peasant famers starve under Stalin's regime of collectivisation, Osip Mandelstam, perhaps the greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century, defies the Kremlin with a few short, audacious lines of verse - a searing indictment of Stalin secretly recited to a handful of friends and fellow artists. When a transcript of the work falls into the hands of the secret police, the poet is taken from his home to Lubyanka prison under accusations of counter-revolutionary activities that carry the highest penalty, and his fate - as well as the fates of those close to him - is cast into bleak uncertainty. A fictional portrait based on a riveting historical episode, The Stalin Epigram is narrated in turn by Mandelstam himself, his devoted wife and his great friends, the poets Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova, amongst other vividly imagined characters. A gripping and memorable achievement of rigorous research and extraordinary empathy, bestselling author Robert Littell's latest novel is a compelling testament to human courage and endurance.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Having previously read other novels by Littel, often surreal I had to read this one as it was being hailed as Littels greatest work an I wholeheartedly agree
This is a timeless story of courage and truth confronting the madness of absolute power. It's a truely brilliant work,readable, sometimes funny and often heartbreaking. There are many books about Stalin's terror, but there cannot be many that bring its truths more vividly, painfully to life. "The Stalin Epigram" should not be missed.
This is a timeless story of courage and truth confronting the madness of absolute power. It's a truely brilliant work,readable, sometimes funny and often heartbreaking. There are many books about Stalin's terror, but there cannot be many that bring its truths more vividly, painfully to life. "The Stalin Epigram" should not be missed.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I had liked the previous book I had read by Mr Littell,- 'The Revolutionist'. I enjoyed the mini-series 'The Company'very much and the shelf is straining under the wieght of the breeze-block novel that I subsequently bought. I would have recommended him to friends as a good thriller writer, better than most. I was surprised to hear him being described as the 'American La Carre.' To my mind this was very hubristic, I esteem Alan Furst as the best of the new espionage writers now around, and the only one who can be compared to the master. Until I read this book.
In what appears to be a thematic departure for Littell, the novel describes the naive, petulant, priapic poet - Osip Mandelstam and his wife Nadezdha in the crucial period shortly before the inception of Stalins Great terror, and his disastrous, Quixotic and doomed response to it. Very few novelists can paint a realistic potrait of those times and there are now scores of second-rate books passing themselves off as evocative thrillers (eg the ghastly 'Child 44' series), but Littell has written a great book. Naturally, we know where it's going to end, and some may compare Littells book unfavourably to Nadezdha Mandelstams memoirs. But Littells strength is his empathy and ability to identify with people striving to survive and sustain their dignity and hope in circumstances we can barely guess at.
Using a sequence of first-person narratives, he paints chilling pictures of the psycopathic Josef Stalin and his accolytes, also a marvelous pen-potrait of the vacillating but seemingly decent Bukharin. But to me his great triumph is how he stepped into the anguished mind of Nadezdha Mandelstam. I have read her memoirs and can see how they would have influenced him but nothing I'd read before in his previous work suggests such eloquent powers of vicarious involvement.
I have read a great many memoirs and novels around this period. Like Grossman and Solzhenitsyn, Littell was able to re-open my eyes afresh to the horrors of that time. And he chose a vainglorious, flawed bohemian poet to illuminate the quiet,enduring deceny of countless thousands of people whose every waking hour involved the supression of their own terror.
I hope that, every now and then , Littell will lay aside his latest blockbuster and pen another work like this.
Even if he doesn't, I feel that the American commentators were right and that, like Le Carre, his talent is not circumbscribed by considerations of genre.He has proven that with this marvellous book.
In what appears to be a thematic departure for Littell, the novel describes the naive, petulant, priapic poet - Osip Mandelstam and his wife Nadezdha in the crucial period shortly before the inception of Stalins Great terror, and his disastrous, Quixotic and doomed response to it. Very few novelists can paint a realistic potrait of those times and there are now scores of second-rate books passing themselves off as evocative thrillers (eg the ghastly 'Child 44' series), but Littell has written a great book. Naturally, we know where it's going to end, and some may compare Littells book unfavourably to Nadezdha Mandelstams memoirs. But Littells strength is his empathy and ability to identify with people striving to survive and sustain their dignity and hope in circumstances we can barely guess at.
Using a sequence of first-person narratives, he paints chilling pictures of the psycopathic Josef Stalin and his accolytes, also a marvelous pen-potrait of the vacillating but seemingly decent Bukharin. But to me his great triumph is how he stepped into the anguished mind of Nadezdha Mandelstam. I have read her memoirs and can see how they would have influenced him but nothing I'd read before in his previous work suggests such eloquent powers of vicarious involvement.
I have read a great many memoirs and novels around this period. Like Grossman and Solzhenitsyn, Littell was able to re-open my eyes afresh to the horrors of that time. And he chose a vainglorious, flawed bohemian poet to illuminate the quiet,enduring deceny of countless thousands of people whose every waking hour involved the supression of their own terror.
I hope that, every now and then , Littell will lay aside his latest blockbuster and pen another work like this.
Even if he doesn't, I feel that the American commentators were right and that, like Le Carre, his talent is not circumbscribed by considerations of genre.He has proven that with this marvellous book.
Format:Hardcover
The story plays in Russia during the time when Stalin put a terror regime on the country to complete his idea of collectivization. Free speech could mean imprisonment and execution.
The main plot is around the poet Ossip Mandelstamm who is brave enough to compose a poem in which he criticise Stalin. I don't spoil too much when I say this will not end well.
The novel is told in form of reports from different people, which gives the book an interesting dynamic. Sometimes, it is very disturbing when you read about the torture in Stalin's prisons. On other occasions it is sort of funny the reports from weightlifter Fikrit Schotmann (who is not the brightest) in particular.
All in all a very enjoyable book which is hard to put down. An easy recommendation.
The main plot is around the poet Ossip Mandelstamm who is brave enough to compose a poem in which he criticise Stalin. I don't spoil too much when I say this will not end well.
The novel is told in form of reports from different people, which gives the book an interesting dynamic. Sometimes, it is very disturbing when you read about the torture in Stalin's prisons. On other occasions it is sort of funny the reports from weightlifter Fikrit Schotmann (who is not the brightest) in particular.
All in all a very enjoyable book which is hard to put down. An easy recommendation.
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