A 2022 BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR: Sunday Times * Irish Times * Spectator * Financial Times * Telegraph * Aspects of History 'The history book you need if you want to understand modern Russia' ANNE APPLEBAUM 'A magnificent, magisterial thousand year history of Russia . . . by one of the masters of Russian scholarship' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE 'A great historian at the peak of his powers' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE '[An] excellent short study' MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMES 'If you really want to understand Putin's Russia today, anchored in its past of myths, then you simply have to read Figes's superb account' ANTONY BEEVOR 'A lucid chronological journey that ably illustrates how narratives from the nation's past have been used to shape its autocratic present' OBSERVER 'A valuable, instructive overview' INDEPENDENT ------------------------- From the great storyteller of Russia, a spellbinding account of the stories that have shaped the country's past - and how they can inform its present. No other country has been so divided over its own past as Russia. None has changed its story so often. How the Russians came to tell their story, and to reinvent it as they went along, is a vital aspect of their history, their culture and beliefs. To understand what Russia's future holds - to grasp what Putin's regime means for Russia and the world - we need to unravel the ideas and meanings of that history. In The Story of Russia, Orlando Figes brings into sharp relief the vibrant characters that comprise Russia's rich history, and whose stories remain so important in making sense of the world's largest nation today - from the crowning of sixteen-year-old Ivan the Terrible in a candlelit cathedral, to Catherine the Great, riding out in a green uniform to arrest her husband at his palace, to the bitter last days of the Romanovs. Beautifully written and based on a lifetime of scholarship, The Story of Russia is a major and definitive work from the great storyteller of Russian history: sweeping, suspenseful, masterful. ------------------------- PRAISE FOR ORLANDO FIGES 'An outstanding historian and writer, he brings distant history so close that you could feel its heartbeat' KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD 'Figes knows more about Russia than any other historian' MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMES
Show moreA 2022 BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR: Sunday Times * Irish Times * Spectator * Financial Times * Telegraph * Aspects of History 'The history book you need if you want to understand modern Russia' ANNE APPLEBAUM 'A magnificent, magisterial thousand year history of Russia . . . by one of the masters of Russian scholarship' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE 'A great historian at the peak of his powers' WILLIAM DALRYMPLE '[An] excellent short study' MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMES 'If you really want to understand Putin's Russia today, anchored in its past of myths, then you simply have to read Figes's superb account' ANTONY BEEVOR 'A lucid chronological journey that ably illustrates how narratives from the nation's past have been used to shape its autocratic present' OBSERVER 'A valuable, instructive overview' INDEPENDENT ------------------------- From the great storyteller of Russia, a spellbinding account of the stories that have shaped the country's past - and how they can inform its present. No other country has been so divided over its own past as Russia. None has changed its story so often. How the Russians came to tell their story, and to reinvent it as they went along, is a vital aspect of their history, their culture and beliefs. To understand what Russia's future holds - to grasp what Putin's regime means for Russia and the world - we need to unravel the ideas and meanings of that history. In The Story of Russia, Orlando Figes brings into sharp relief the vibrant characters that comprise Russia's rich history, and whose stories remain so important in making sense of the world's largest nation today - from the crowning of sixteen-year-old Ivan the Terrible in a candlelit cathedral, to Catherine the Great, riding out in a green uniform to arrest her husband at his palace, to the bitter last days of the Romanovs. Beautifully written and based on a lifetime of scholarship, The Story of Russia is a major and definitive work from the great storyteller of Russian history: sweeping, suspenseful, masterful. ------------------------- PRAISE FOR ORLANDO FIGES 'An outstanding historian and writer, he brings distant history so close that you could feel its heartbeat' KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD 'Figes knows more about Russia than any other historian' MAX HASTINGS, SUNDAY TIMES
Show moreA publishing event from one of our most gifted storytellers: the expansive and enthralling history of Russia, from its foundations to the present
Orlando Figes is an award-winning author and historian, who has held teaching posts at Birkbeck College, University of London and Trinity College, University of Cambridge. He was born in London in 1959 and studied History at the University of Cambridge. Figes is the bestselling author of nine books on Russian and European history, including Natasha’s Dance and A People’s Tragedy. His books have been translated into over 30 languages.
Figes’s book is an absorbing and enlightening read, a triumph of
concision, analysis and insight
*Daily Mail*
A deeply impressive and deeply immersive book . . . The author sets
out to reveal Russia’s history, its people’s perception of their
past and the manifold ways in which those in power manipulate both
events and legend to shape the present. It is a saga of
multi-millennial identity politics
*Spectator*
To understand Putin's paranoia, read this book on Russia's
history
*Telegraph*
A lucid chronological journey that ably illustrates how narratives
from the nation’s past have been used to shape its autocratic
present
*Observer*
If you really want to understand Putin’s Russia today, anchored in
its past of myths, then you simply have to read Figes’s superb
account in The Story of Russia
*Antony Beevor*
Figes’s book is an absorbing and enlightening read, a triumph of
concision, analysis and insight
*Daily Mail*
An indispensable survey of more than 1,000 years of history shows
how myth and fact mix dangerously in the tales this crucial country
tells about itself
*Guardian*
A magnificent, magisterial thousand year history of Russia . . .
its tsars and tyrants, wars and massacres, ideas and dreams vividly
drawn, its analysis of Russian power and empire essential reading
today
*Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of THE ROMANOVS and STALIN: THE
COURT OF THE RED TSAR*
An expert on Russia delivers a crucially relevant study . . . A
lucid, astute text that unpacks the myths of Russian history to
help explain present-day motivations and actions
*Kirkus (starred review)*
Urgent and revelatory and brilliantly told, it’s all the things you
pray a book will be when you first pick it up
*Peter Morgan*
Excellent short study
*Sunday Times*
The historian’s latest work on Russia is a lucid chronological
journey that ably illustrates how narratives from the nation’s past
have been used to shape its autocratic present
*Observer*
Figes skilfully assesses the evolution of the forms of government
and society that inhibited the development of controls of the
tsar
*BBC History Magazine*
Accessible and epic . . . A great introduction to an enthralling
subject
*History Revealed*
An impressive account of the ideas, myths and ideologies that have
shaped that country and the way its people interpret the past . . .
Figes’s book offers a valuable, instructive overview
*Independent*
Anyone who wants to detox from Putin’s mythomanic claims about
Russia’s history and what it means for today’s world will find some
relief in The Story of Russia . . . Figes presents Russia’s history
in a straightforward manner
*Irish Independent*
Valuable book
*Irish Times*
[An] imaginative sweep and a capacity to encapsulate in a memorable
way
*TLS*
Orlando Figes provides valuable lessons about the importance of
mythologizing the country’s past in his sweeping new survey of
Russian history
*New York Times*
Sweeping and concise . . . It is a skilled piece of compression
*Tablet*
This is a brilliant condensation – his analysis of Soviet Russia is
superb – of a seriously complex tale
*Spectrum*
The Story of Russia combines profound knowledge and understanding
of the longer, deeper structural processes of history with the
personal experience of an author seeking to understand what is
happening on the ground today
*Financial Times*
Orlando Figes’s latest book provides fascinating insights into this
contemporary conundrum. The Story of Russia is a truly incisive and
important dissection of Russia’s troubled past, both real and
mythical, but it also provides a crucial context for understanding
the present
*Jewish Chronicle*
This book is a timely reminder of the malign uses to which history
can be put
*Politics Home*
A brilliantly concentrated meditation on the power of myth and
history, and the ability of both to form and deform and guide and
misguide the present. Thoughtful, nuanced and above all persuasive,
it shows how we are all trapped in the loops and coils of myth,
memory and forgetting, and demonstrates the urgent need for
historians to remember, and insist on the truth
*Spectator*
Beautifully brief, The Story of Russia shows centuries of regimes
that revisit their past to manipulate the future, and eternally
start from the wrong place acting in venal self-interest rather
than the true national interest
*Financial Times*
Given the news, Orlando Figes’s short book could hardly be better
timed ... His story abounds in strange and memorable characters,
from emperors to writers. But it’s the sheer sweep that impresses
most, as he turns a potentially grim and overwhelming subject into
a delightfully brisk and enjoyable read
*Sunday Times*
To understand Russia’s autocratic present, you must examine its
past – although Russia’s perception of that past is ever-shifting.
Its founding myths have shaped its history right up to the present.
“Russia is a country held together by ideas rooted in its distant
past, histories continuously reconfigured and repurposed to suit
its present needs
*Irish Times*
The Story of Russia by Orlando Figes (Bloomsbury, £25) looks 900
years earlier, to the national myths that Putin exploited in his
invasion of Ukraine. “The country’s past will be reinvented by the
Russian state as its needs change,” Figes observes
*Telegraph*
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