I am pleased to present a guest post by my great good friend and fine poet, George Vance:
Following publication of a series of incisive essays critiquing our brave new algorithmic world, Giuliano da Empoli’s first novel, The Wizard of the Kremlin, is a galvanizing read full of incisive analysis and acute bons mots. This politico-propaganda thriller, whose outcome we already know, elucidates the machinations behind Putin the Tsar’s rise.
The Wizard is Vadim Baranov, a phantomesque figure modeled on the real Vladislov Surkov – politician, avant-garde theater director, writer, and shadowy advisor to Putin himself, during the lead-up to the 2014 war on Ukraine.
The novel’s narrator, clearly da Empoli himself, lands in Moscow in the years after the Wall has crumbled and wild capitalism has unleashed a free-for-all of Oligarchs, shootouts, and cultural/political anarchy. Browsing an old bookshelf, he comes across First Dissenter Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1922 novel We, a satiric take-down of the budding Soviet regime, but also an astounding prophecy of Vlad Putin’s Russia a century later. Surfing the Net, he lights on an enigmatic quote by a certain Nicolas Brandeis (pseudo for Baranov) citing the self-same Zamyatin. A twittery chat ensues and he is off to Baranov’s dacha hidden away in the obscure Siberian forest.
Da Empoli builds on his earlier non-fiction essays, such as Obama: Politics in the Age of Facebook, 2008, and The Chaos Engineers, 2019, parlaying his deep research into a tour de force, with Baranov delivering an eye-opening narrative decoding the intricate propoganda machine behind the persona of Russia’s consummate, albeit totally fabricated, savior-potentate.
Familiar figures appear : Boris Spasky (chess champion and supporter of One Russia); Bill Clinton (the famous Yeltsin-inspired laughing jag); Angela Merkel (the Dog anecdote); Mikhaïl Khodorkovsky (tycoon, prisoner, exile); Prigozhin (founder of the Wagner militia, suicidal risk-taker). These are joined by a cast of other lesser-known characters.
Quotable quotes abound. Here’s Limonov, in an anti Western tirade : “Do you know what the beginning of the end was ?… Richelieu. It was he who abolished the duel…can you imagine ? Western man never recovered. From there to paternal leave, a straight line…TV, a drudge job…, vacations at the beach, and it’s over before you know it…A wasted life – the only unpardonable crime.”
The novel is populated with flashy, short-lived characters, each worth a novel of his own, and many are writers themselves. Members of the siloviki, the close circle of politicians/oligarks/criminals (all three at once), they are sometimes in and sometimes out, each with an ego that only Putin’s sovereign democracy (‘fake’ democracy, according to a Muscovite professor in the 1990’s) can contain, and does. They all end either in jail, exile, house arrest with varying lengths of leash, or of course, death by ‘suicide’.
Baranov, in da Empoli’s telling, lives out his post-Wizard retirement in the serene company of his vast and hallowed library, but takes this one chance to let all the pent-up cats out of the bag, to the great satisfaction of the amazed and charmed listener-narrator.
Read it before we’re submerged in the coming AI deluge.
The Wizard of the Kremlin by Giuliano da Empoli, translated by Willard Wood, Pushkin, 2022, originally published in French as Le Mage du Kremlin.
George Vance is the author of a number of poetry books including A Short Circuit & Xmas Collage, from corrupt press. Has read at Paris venues IVY, Poets Live, Live Poets, Wice, Spoken Word. Published in Upstairs at Duroc, Bastille, on-line mags Nth dgree, RETORT, EKLEKSOPEDIA, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Paris Lit Up Poetry Journal (PLU Gazette). His video ‘Heights of Experience’ was presented in Brussels as part of ARTCETERA, and an experimental piece (In)(de)finite Gist was presented at the 2018 David Foster Wallace Conference. He lives in the Champagne Region of France.
Scene of the Crime 