/ world today news/ The novel “The Kremlin Wizard” was actually published more than a year ago in Italy, and then – after it was published, we note, immediately after February 2022 – conquered France. But today the essence of the event is that it is being prepared for translation and publication in the USA, with the result that American book critics are electrified. Especially since we are talking about a bestseller that is already translated not only into English, but also into 30 languages.
In Russia, we somehow did not have time for this book, it was illuminated with us to a minimum – mainly in the form of a translation of an article in the “New York Times”. Well, let’s see what happens if it is released here. The picture for our reader will be a little funny. Because what becomes a revelation in the West does not necessarily cause respect in Russia.
In France, as now in the US, it was a political sensation. Before us is a book that – as they think – explains the reasons for the behavior of the Russian president. At the same time, he explains “benevolently”. And that’s a crime. The author, in the words of “Le Monde”, “throws the reader” into the “paranoid and criminal madness of Putin’s clique” in order to explain it from the inside. And from the inside, we add, it turns out that it is not madness, it is not paranoia and it is not crime This should not have happened and all this should not happen: a place in the top 5 of sales, an award from the French Academy, a scandal because one vote was not enough for the “Goncourt” award.
We are talking about a novel. Why do people read novels? For fun. So that some words, sounds, smells, scenes remain in their head, the described magical world is remembered with some unique little things. But the author of “The Wizard of the Kremlin” Giuliano da Empoli is actually a politician, he was an adviser to Italian figures and remains a political scientist of a European scale. He published several treatises on political subjects and then decided to write his first novel.
And this is what happened: there is such a genre at the intersection of philosophy, journalism and literature, when a monologue-dialogue about values and ideas is expressed by a relatively believable character or several characters. This is how Voltaire and Rousseau wrote, our Solzhenitsyn and Zinoviev. And today the remarkable Victor Pelevin successfully revives philosophy (or ridicules it). Well, who said that’s bad? There are books like that.
But again for our reader here everything is complicated. For starters, the “Wizard of the Kremlin” is not Putin. This is a certain Vadim Baranov, a purely fictitious person – adviser to the president. Descendant of an aristocratic family, descended from the top of the party intelligentsia under Brezhnev (so far so good, not quite impossible), but also a childhood friend of Khodorkovsky, worked for Berezovsky, communicated with Prigozhin, not to mention his boss Putin . And they express all kinds of thoughts to him, and he teaches them to live. For example, that they don’t need to surround themselves with mediocrity – they are the first to pass. Well, our Italian author has accumulated a lot of nice Italian thoughts here.
After all, anything is possible in a novel. In the pages of Dumas, the King of France or the Prime Minister can say things that they never said in their lives. And Dumas’ character, d’Artagnan, although a real person, lived an era later and had distinctly different adventures.
Finally, yes, Empoli have only been to Russia four times (hardly for long). Don’t expect him to have a deep understanding of our daily lives. Judging by the available passages, the best pages of the novel are about love, but even here everything is a bit too much: the harmful Khodorkovsky tries to steal the beautiful Ksenia from Baranov
All in all, here is a political-philosophical treatise in which an intelligent Italian with an open heart tries to understand how the Russian president thinks. And that’s good. Let him try.
But here’s the bad thing. Clouds of religious, philosophical and political ideas have poured across our borders from eastern and western directions for centuries. And there has never been a remarkable literary work “about Russian life” written by a foreigner, such that we did not have to smile falsely. But the opposite happens, although often with the participation of Russian heroes.
Well, they don’t understand us, we are so mysterious to them. At best, they are divided into those who sincerely try to understand, and those who, from the very experience of their fellows, fall into evil hysteria. So there is no need to dream of this understanding and run after them in an attempt to reveal to them all our mysterious soul.
Translation: V. Sergeev
Subscribe to our YouTube channel:
and for the channel in Telegram:
#Putin #ready #conquer #America
