Bookshelf

Stalin’s Ghost, Mac Millan, 2007

Ceux qui connaissent déjà Arkadi Renko peuvent se réjouir! Quant aux autres, ils trouveront dans cette nouvelle aventure une porte d'entrée idéale pour pénétrer dans l'univers de l'enquêteur moscovite.

Après nous avoir promené quelque peu sous les tropiques ou au Japon, Martin Cruz Smith (Gorky Park, l'Etoile Polaire, Red Square, Chiens et Loups) semble revenir pour de bon dans la bonne vieille Russie natale de Renko. Alleluia ! Après le monde morbide de la zone interdite de Tchernobyl (Chiens et Loups), l'enquêteur paria de la crim' russe chez qui tout est usé sauf la conscience, est jeté dans un milieu qui n'est pas moins sordide : celui des extrêmistes nationalistes russes, en pleine renaissance.

Nostalgie stalinienne, misère humaine, frustrations et humiliations, violence, manipulation par quelques experts politologues étrangers, tous les ingrédients sont là pour planter un décor social, historique et politique complexe, qui ne tombe jamais dans le simplisme. L'intrigue, entre Moscou, Tver et les anciens champs de bataille du saillant de Rjevsk, repose sur une rigoureuse documentation. On est dans la Russie d'aujourd'hui et Martin Cruz Smith réussit remarquablement à faire évoluer son héros, toujours aussi tendre, mais chaque fois un peu plus sombre et désabusé.

About the author

Nadia Sikorsky

Nadia Sikorsky was born and raised in Moscow. She graduated from the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University and went on to complete her postgraduate studies there, earning a PhD in History. She spent 13 years at UNESCO, first in Paris and then in Geneva. After serving as Director of Communications at Green Cross International, founded by Mikhail Gorbachev, she launched NashaGazeta.ch in 2007, Switzerland’s first Russian-language online daily newspaper.

In 2022, Nadia Sikorsky was named to Le Temps’ Forum des 100, which brings together individuals who, in the newspaper’s view, have “significantly contributed to the success of French-speaking Switzerland”, from across public life, business, politics, science and culture.

After 18 years at the helm of NashaGazeta.ch, Nadia Sikorsky decided to devote herself to what had always held a special place in her work as a journalist: culture in all its diversity. This led to the creation of Russian Accent, a trilingual cultural blog in Russian, French and English, born in the heart of Europe, in Switzerland, which has become her second home and whose multiculturalism and multilingualism have helped shape the character of this new project.

At the heart of the project is the perspective of a European of Russian origin, drawing on more than 35 years of professional experience and a deep knowledge of both cultural traditions. Nadia Sikorsky sees her role as that of a cultural mediator between the two. The title of the blog, Russian Accent, reflects this idea: the accent is neither a linguistic barrier nor a political position, but a distinctive cultural imprint within a European context.

Events
Ella Maillart
Brauner
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Daniil Harms: Between Reason and Zaum

A new book by the Geneva-based Slavist Jean-Philippe Jaccard and his Russian colleague Andrei Ustinov, now living in San Francisco, has been published by the European University at St Petersburg: Vzir Zaumi. Daniil Harms and the Literary Avant-Garde of the 1920s. In the authors' own words, the volume offers a kind of X-ray of Leningrad's "left-wing " circles and their evolution during the period between Harms's poetic debut and the creation of OBERIU, as well as the dynamics that shaped those circles.

The Frail Iron Genius

A few days ago, the Lausanne-based publisher Éditions Noir sur Blanc brought out Guzel Yakhina’s novel about the celebrated Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein. French readers will be able to read it in Maud Mabillard’s translation and, importantly, in full, including the ninth chapter omitted from the Russian edition.