The Wizard of the Kremlin de Giuliano da Empoli

Date de parution : 11.2023
Format : Broché
Nombre de pages : 304
Résumé : Filled with real political insight and intrigue, this thrilling novel explores the nature of power through the inner workings of Putin’s regime. Known as the “Wizard of the Kremlin,” the enigmatic Vadim Baranov was a TV producer before becoming a political advisor to Putin, aka “The Czar.” After his resignation from this position, legends about him multiply, with no one able to distinguish truth from fiction. Until one night, when he tells his story to the narrator of this book… He immerses us in the heart of the Russian state, where sycophants and oligarchs have been engaging in open warfare, and where Vadim, now the regime’s main spin doctor, turns an entire country into an avant-garde political stage. Yet Vadim is not as ambitious as the others. Entangled in the increasingly dark secrets of the regime he has helped create, he will do anything to get out, guided by the memory of his grandfather, an eccentric aristocrat who survived the Revolution, and the mesmerizing, merciless Ksenia, whom he has fallen in love with. Giuliano da Empoli, once a senior advisor to Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi, draws on his experience behind the scenes to create an authentic, compelling portrait of power and how it corrupts. Leseprobe 1   For a long time, the most disparate reports had been circulating about him. Some said he’d retired to a monastery on Mount Athos to pray among the rocks and lizards, others swore they’d seen him partying at a villa in Sotogrande with a cast of coked-up supermodels. Still others said he’d been spotted on a runway at the Sharjah airport, at the militia headquarters in the Donbas, or wandering the ruins of Mogadishu. Since Vadim Baranov quit his post as advisor to the tsar, stories about him had been multiplying rather than fading away. This happens sometimes. For the most part, men in power derive their aura from the position they hold. When they lose it, it’s as if a plug had been pulled. They deflate like one of those giant puppets at the entrance to amusement parks, and if you see these men in the street you wonder how they ever stirred such passions. Baranov was of a different order. What order that might be, though, I’d be hard-pressed to say. In photographs, he seemed sturdily built but not athletic, always dressed in dark, slightly overlarge suits. His face was ordinary, somewhat boyish, with a pale complexion, and his straight black hair was cut like a schoolboy’s. A video taken on the fringes of an official meeting showed him laughing, a rare sight in Russia, where even a smile is considered a sign of idiocy. In fact, he seemed to pay no attention whatever to his appearance—surprising, considering that his stock-in-trade was exactly that, setting mirrors in a circle so that a spark could become a wildfire. Baranov went through life surrounded by mysteries. The one thing about him that was more or less certain was his influence over the tsar. In...