Judy DempseyNonresident senior fellow at Carnegie Europe and editor-in-chief of Strategic Europe
Fiction
A Present Past: Titan and Other Chronicles is a captivating set of short stories by Sergei Lebedev. He is gifted at dissecting the nature of totalitarianism, its demise, and the role of the past in today’s Russia.
Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These is a trenchant novel based in the Ireland of the 1980s. Keegan slowly lifts the curtain on the collusion of the Catholic church, politicians, and locals on their cruel treatment of young women who had illegitimate children.
Serhij Zhadan’s Himmel über Charkiw. One of Ukraine’s great poets spent seven months in Kharkiv. From February to August 2022, he kept a diary of how the locals coped with the relentless Russian bombing. His writing swells with humanity, solidarity, and humor.
Politics
Two very recent books that deal with Russia’s war against Ukraine. One is Gwendolyn Sasse’s Der Krieg gegen die Ukraine (available in English in September). Sasse weaves in so much in this short analysis about the politics, history, and war in Ukraine, and how Russia never accepted its independence. The second book is Alexander Etkind’s Russia Against Modernity. Here’s the core of his argument: “Putin’s war was a ‘special operation’ against the Ukrainian people, their statehood and culture. It was also a broader operation against the modern world of climate awareness, energy transition and digital labor.”
Podcast, film, or music
I was spoiled this year for music. The Kronos Quartet, celebrating fifty years since their first concert, gave a mesmerizing performance at the Pierre Boulez Saal. Terrific to hear them play works by contemporary (mostly American) composers, including Terry Riley, George Crumb, and Aleksandra Vrebalov. Hard to forget Grigory Sokolov’s recital at the Berlin Philharmonie: Purcell and Mozart and then the encores… Rameau, Chopin, Rachmaninoff…
Guilty pleasure
Seishi Yokokizo’s mystery stories—finally in English. His plots are gripping with great twists in solving the crime. And you get fascinating insights into Japanese society of the 1930s and 40s, as I discovered in the The Honjin Murders.
Greg YudinProfessor of political philosophy at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences and visiting scholar at Princeton University
Fiction
I am reading and rereading German fiction about the Weimar and Nazi periods. The Tin Drum by Günter Grass, as well as The Train Was on Time by Heinrich Böll are among the most important to me. Since the war started, the sales of the books describing the Weimar and Nazi experiences have skyrocketed in Russia, with the bookstores displaying them in the first rows as a sign of silent defiance. That includes both fiction and nonfiction literature, as the country prepares for painful work with its past and searches for templates.
Politics
I have just started A Spectre, Haunting, a new book by China Miéville, a brilliant historical contextualization of The Communist Manifesto. Miéville’s previous book in this genre, October, traces the unfolding of the October Revolution and serves as a brilliant guide on how changes happen in Russia. It shows how important it is to have clear ideological and policy solutions ready when there is an opening for proactive politics in Russian history. The book about the manifesto does the opposite, emphasizing how powerful political ideas are born out of desperation amid political turmoil.
Podcast, film, or music
Once again, the Weimar years: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Berlin, Alexanderplatz is a series that carefully reconstructs an atmosphere of despair, alienation, and distrust that is almost bound to produce a catastrophe. So many parallels.
Guilty pleasure
Once a sports fan, I quit following it when the war broke out. I often have rock music playing in the background when working. One of my recent discoveries is a young punk rock band Pornofilmy (The Porn Movies) from Dubna, Moscow region. They became very popular in Russia before leaving the country after the war started. Strong and explicit poetry, aggressive political criticism, and profound love for the homeland—clearly a new phenomenon for those following Russian culture.
Jana PuglierinHead of the Berlin Office of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR)
Fiction
Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These (Faber & Faber 2022). This spring I went to Ireland for the first time in my life and bought this small book at the airport on the way back because an Irish woman had told me I would understand more about her country by reading it. She was right—and on top of that, it was a gorgeous read.
Politics
Andrew Small’s No Limits: The Inside Story of China’s War with the West (Melville House 2022). After reading it, I became a lot more knowledgeable about what the Chinese threat means for Western democracies. However, I now understand even less why there is still so little awareness of this and why we are not all walking around with a much greater sense of urgency.
Podcast, film, or music
I cannot recommend strongly enough Arkady Ostrovsky’s podcast Next Year in Moscow, in which he tells the stories of Russians who lost their country and their future and went into exile after the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine began.
Guilty pleasure
I only really wanted to watch the Guardians of the Galaxy movies because I wanted to do something with my teenage son that he would truly enjoy. To my own surprise, I had a blast—plus, no movie has ever had a better soundtrack.
Tom de WaalSenior fellow at Carnegie Europe
Fiction
Georgi Gospodinov’s Time Shelter is a meditation on time, memory, and death in the spirit of Jorge Luis Borges. It’s also a witty and poignant tale of the after-effects of East European Communism.
Politics
The Eurasian Steppe, by archaeologist and historian Warwick Ball, is a tour de force—and a magnificently illustrated one too—that takes us through the last few thousand years in the steppe that stretches from Mongolia to the Black Sea. Some of his histories are of almost forgotten peoples—Scythians, Sarmatians, Khazars—but the book frequently jolts you with its contemporary relevance, when he writes about Russians’ Eurasian heritage or the importance of Ukrainian grain for world markets.
Podcast, film, or music
Next Year in Moscow, the podcast series by Arkady Ostrovsky of the Economist, stirs both mind and heart. Many different Russians in exile, most of them highly articulate, tell him their stories and in so doing tell us an awful lot about Russia over the last two decades and what went so badly wrong.
Guilty pleasure
Having been to Finland this year, I nominate anything Moomin related. Witty blissful books and films perfect for children and adults with children.
Michael Z. WiseWriter and cofounder of New Vessel Press
Fiction
I’m pleased to have published a brilliant new satirical novel, Professor Schiff’s Guilt, in which the protagonist takes a journey to Africa that ends up as a provocative exploration of racism and the collective responsibility to address it. It’s by Agur Schiff, superbly rendered from Hebrew into English by Booker Prize winning translator Jessica Cohen.
Politics
The Revolt Against Humanity: Imagining a Future Without Us by Adam Kirsch, is a highly disturbing examination of two current streams of thought that Kirsch calls Anthropocene antihumanism and Transhumanism, both of which maintain that human existence as we’ve known it is doomed to extinction. Kirsch’s eloquent analysis of a post-human future elucidates a multitude of chilling intellectual trends.
Podcast, film, or music
A cultural highlight was the May 21 Carnegie Hall concert (two years late due to Covid-19) celebrating the centenary of Andrei Sakharov’s birth. The lineup included Gidon Kremer, Evgeny Kissin, Lera Auerbach, and the Emerson String Quartet—a sublime musical tribute to a towering champion of human rights.
Guilty pleasure
Eating stacks of apricot pancakes on Saturday mornings while wading into the Weekend FT and the New York Times.
Jessica T. MathewsDistinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Politics
The Pacific War Trilogy. The first volume is Pacific Crucible; War at Sea in the Pacific 1941-42, followed by The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-44, and finally, Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific, 1944-45.
Ian Toll’s trilogy about the war in the Pacific during World War II. Extremely long (1,700 pages in total), yet as I neared the last 100 pages of each volume, I found myself slowing down because I didn’t want it to be over. And I wasn’t even particularly interested in the war in the Pacific before I picked up volume I by chance. Beautifully written about Japan, the United States domestically as well as details of the maritime war. A brilliant piece of work.
Biography
King: A Life by Jonathan Eig. Couldn’t put it down. A great biography about a man who did nothing less than change America in a career of only thirteen years.
Krzysztof BłędowskiVisiting adjunct professor at the Rzeszów University of Information Technology and Management
Fiction
Empuzjon (in Polish only) by Olga Tokarczuk. A tantalizing tale of convoluted encounters among strangers set in a sleepy spa deep in the Habsburg Empire around its final days. Clearly an allegorical swipe at today’s travails in the European Union.
Politics
The Ottomans: Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs by Marc David Baer. A compelling argument that the Ottomans fascinated the Europeans across centuries, triggering envy and emulation along the way. The author documents indelible marks of their influence left across the old continent.
Music
Chamber music by René de Boisdeffre (various CDs). A completely forgotten late romantic French composer of a small volume of chamber works delights today thanks to a series of CDs—to comprise his complete output—issued by an equally obscure Polish label Acte Préalable. Refreshing and delightful to listen to.
Guilty pleasures
Fifth (and final) season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime. Not as biting and shocking as the previous seasons, this last-hooray offers a fast-paced look at Jewish middle-class families’ travails set in the 1950-1960s New York City. If you laugh at them, then you also laugh at yourself since their shenanigans are ultimately yours.
Meg BortinWriter and author of The Everyday French Chef
Fiction
I found Giuliano da Empoli’s Le Mage du Kremlin (The Wizard of the Kremlin) to be an absolutely fascinating take not just on power in Putin’s Russia, but on Russia in general, all the more so in that the author has apparently never spent any serious time there. Incredibly well informed, insightful, and even prophetic given that it sets the scene for the war in Ukraine but was published before the invasion. An English version is due out in October.
Politics
If the novel cited above is truth thinly disguised as fiction, Philip Oltermann’s The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class That Tried to Win the Cold War is history that reads like a novel. Could even Le Carré invent this true story of East Germany’s attempt to fight capitalism and root out dissidents via poetry workshops led by spies?
Podcast, film, music
Suits. Edgy, smart New York legal drama with heart. Brilliant cast (yes, including Meghan Markle). Nine seasons, 134 episodes. Was perfect for getting through lockdown.
Guilty pleasure
Again, Suits. So guilty that I’m not going to tell you how many times I’ve watched the whole series from beginning to end…
Martin EhlChief analyst at Hospodářské Noviny
Fiction
I’m trying to fill the gap I have with current Ukrainian culture, so the novel Internat (The Orphanage in English) of Serhiy Zhadan is now my favorite. It is a reminder that the war not started in February 2022 but much earlier.
Politics
Anybody who wants to understand current Hungary should read Zsuzsanna Szelényi’s Tainted Democracy. It is a personal as well as political story of Hungary and its leader from the late 1980s until now, very well written.
Podcast, film, or music
My favorite singers or music groups from the early 1990s released in the last time some interesting new (but not so new) music. So, for example, Everything But The Girl and their album Fuse is my current listening.
Guilty pleasures
Good white wines from Southern Moravia region, Czechia, accompanied by food creations according to (for me recently discovered) SIMPLE cookbook by Ottolenghi.
