Agent Dmitri - Emil Draitser - Guest Book Review

Published by Duckworth

Guest review by Mandy Jenkinson

Dmitri Bystrolyotov was one of the Great Illegals, a group of Soviet spies operating in the West between the two world wars. He was recruited in the 1920s and went on to lead a quite extraordinary life. He was a larger-than-life figure, courageous, charismatic, a master of seduction (he invented the modern “honey trap”), handsome, resourceful, and above all a committed Communist, dedicated to the service of his motherland.

Much of the trajectory of his life as a spy seems stranger than fiction, and that, for me, was one of the problems of this book. Emil Draitser has done an impressive amount of painstaking research, but still relies in part on Bystrolotov’s own memoirs, and Bystrolyotov is an unreliable narrator par excellence. He contacted the author back in the 1970s shortly before Draitser’s emigration hoping he would take on the task of writing his biography. Thirty years later and with increased access to the archives after the fall of the Soviet Union, Draitser set about the task. He admits to not being able to verify some of the events, but too often allows himself the luxury of speculating. Reconstructed conversations (which always sound false and stilted), cod psychological explanations of Bystrolyotov’s motives and actions, too much reliance on the memoirs, all made me distrustful.

Reading the tagline “The Secret History of Russia’s Most Daring Spy”, I expected the book to be more thrilling and exciting than it actually is. I was soon bored by the accounts of one incredible exploit after another. I found the book more interesting after Bystrolyotov’s ill-advised return to the Soviet Union, where instead of being feted for all he had done for his country, he fell foul of Stalin’s paranoia and was arrested and sent to the Gulag. His ordeal in the far North makes for some gripping reading. But essentially I just couldn’t engage with this man. He never truly came alive for me. Perhaps that’s inevitable with someone who spent much of his life pretending to be someone he wasn’t, and just as it’s impossible to really enter the heart and mind of many another super-spy, such as Kim Philby, perhaps such a biography is always doomed to partial failure. I would have liked to see more illustrations, but perhaps theses weren’t available.

Nevertheless, in spite of my reservations, this is an intriguing look into the world of high-level espionage, and a glimpse, at least, into the secretive world of Soviet intelligence. A pity about the lurid cover, though, one hardly appropriate for a serious biography.


Many thanks to Mandy for reading and reviewing this novel for The Little Reader Library. Mandy is an omnivorous reader who enjoys reviewing, for newbooks magazine as well as elsewhere, and enjoys discovering new authors.

The Time of Women - Elena Chizhova - Guest Book Review

Translated from the Russian by Simon Patterson with Nina Cordas

Published by Glagoslav

Guest book review by Mandy Jenkinson

On the surface this is a simple, domestic tale. Three elderly women are raising a little girl, Sofia, the illegitimate daughter of factory worker Antonina, who has been lucky enough to be allocated a room in the “grannies’” communal flat. While Antonina goes to work, often accepting double shifts, to support the makeshift family, the grannies tell their stories to little Sofia and reminisce about their lives, filling her head with images from Russia’s troubled past. Each of the old women has suffered immeasurably during the war and siege of Leningrad, losing homes and families. Now they pour all the love they have into the little girl.

Life is hard. The novel poignantly and vividly captures the atmosphere of 1960s Soviet life – the daily drudgery to find enough food, the endless queues, the excitement of finding fabric to make a dress and managing to jump the queue and get a TV, the difficulties of washing and doing the laundry without a bathroom. And interspersed with the minutiae of daily life are the memories of the old ladies and the unbelievable struggle they had to survive during the Siege, the hunger, the deaths, the cold. Much of the action takes place in the flat, but we are also taken to Antonina’s factory, to the shops, the church, the nursery where Sofia goes before the grannies take over.

With these three generations of women the reader has a moving and compelling account of life in Soviet Russia, all told from a feminine perspective. Men are pretty much absent from the book, or if there, then pretty unsatisfactorily. It’s certainly a grim story but ultimately one of hope and renewal. Antonina doesn’t have to suffer as much as the grannies did. Sofia will not have to suffer as much as her mother did. She will have choices none of them could have dreamt of, and she will remember them with affection and gratitude.

This is a rich and multi-faceted novel and a must-read for anyone wanting to learn more about life in the Soviet Union. It’s not always an easy read, as it frequently switches between the narrative voices, and it’s not always immediately clear whose voice we are hearing. Passages of stream of consciousness need to be read slowly and carefully to fully follow what’s happening. And it certainly helps to have some knowledge of the historical background before starting. However, these are minor criticisms of a book that I very much enjoyed and one that I look forward to reading again.  It captures perfectly the atmosphere and environment of a particular place and time with compassion and empathy, and the characters come alive and linger in the imagination long after the reader finishes the last page. A fascinating and immensely enjoyable book and a worthy winner of the Russian Booker.

Many thanks to Mandy for reading and reviewing this novel for The Little Reader Library. Mandy is an omnivorous reader who enjoys reviewing, for newbooks magazine as well as elsewhere, and enjoys discovering new authors.