Best books… Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum, the journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, picks the best books about tsarist Russia. She is talking at Cliveden Literary Festival on 15 October (clivedenliteraryfestival.org). Her book, Red Famine, is out now
Letters from Russia by the Marquis de Custine, 1839 (Penguin £12.99). The author was a French aristocrat who arrived wanting to admire Russian autocracy, but wound up amazed by the hypocrisy and servility of the ruling class. A witty analysis, and weirdly contemporary: a surprising amount of the commentary is still true today.
Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov, 1966 (Everyman £10.99). It’s hard to think of a more elegant evocation of a Russian childhood, or of any childhood. Although full of irony and self-deprecating humour, the real theme is nostalgia for an irretrievably vanished past.
The Romanovs by Simon Sebag Montefiore, 2016 (W&N £12.99). Another useful reminder that some things in Russia never change. The Romanovs – Russia’s royal family – sought to cultivate hysteria, anger and conspiratorial thinking from their earliest days in power. Their reign eventually collapsed in chaos.
1812: Napoleon’s Fatal
March on Moscow by Adam Zamoyski, 2004 (Harperpress £12.99). It was a war that didn’t have to happen, with an outcome that nobody foresaw. This is the definitive account, quoting soldiers’ letters and testimony never used before, among other things.
The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin, 2003 (Phoenix £8.99). Historical crime fiction at the highest level, by one of modern Russia’s best and most popular writers. This book, the first in an entertaining and unpredictable series, introduces Erast Fandorin, the Sherlock Holmes of the Russian imperial police.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, 1877 (Penguin £7.99). Still the best book ever written about the conflict between love and duty. And still the best book about daily life in aristocratic St Petersburg, from ice-skating and mushroom picking, to horse races and grand balls. Worth re-reading even if you think you remember it.