A Times Book of the Year 2021 – The Story of Russia’s History and Politics
Catherine Belton is the former long-serving Moscow Correspondent for the Financial Times. She has previously reported on Russia for Moscow Times and Business Week. In 2008, she was shortlisted for Business Journalist of the year at the British Press Awards. She lives in London.
‘This is the most remarkable account so far of Putin’s rise …
Groundbreaking … several hair-raising revelations … Relentless and
convincing. There are gobsmacking moments … This is a superb
book’
OBSERVER ‘A fearless, fascinating account … Reads at times like a
John le Carré novel… A groundbreaking and meticulously researched
anatomy of the Putin regime, Belton’s book shines a light on the
pernicious threats Russian money and influence now pose to the
west’
GUARDIAN ‘Modern Russia in full, horrifying technicolour … this
riveting, immaculately researched book is arguably the best single
volume written about Putin, the people around him and perhaps even
about contemporary Russia itself in the past three decades’
PETER FRANKOPAN, FINANCIAL TIMES ‘Books about modern Russia abound
… Belton has surpassed them all. Her much-awaited book is the
best and most important on modern Russia. It benefits from a
meticulous compilation of open sources, but also from the accounts
of disillusioned Kremlin insiders, former business cronies and some
remarkably candid people still high up in the system. The result is
hair-raising.’
THE TIMES ‘An outstanding exposé of Putin and his criminal pals …
[A] long-awaited, must read book’
SUNDAY TIMES ‘Arguably the biggest story of the 21st century so
far. In forensically unravelling it, journalist Catherine Belton
has done a great service, producing a book that western experts on
modern Russia acknowledge as vital to our understanding of the
Putin phenomenon’
DAILY MAIL, BOOK OF THE WEEK ‘A serious, absolutely timely warning.
No book has documented the Russian president’s leadership so
indefatigably and compellingly’
DAILY TELEGRAPH ‘Meticulously researched and superbly written;
terrifying in its scope and utterly convincing in its argument …
The Putin book that we've been waiting for’
OLIVER BULLOUGH ‘An extraordinarily important book’
CHRIS PATTEN
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