The Wizard of the Kremlin

He was known as the Kremlin's great illusionist. The enigmatic Vadim Baranov produced reality shows before becoming Putin's éminence grise. When he resigns from his position as political advisor, legends about him abound, and no one is able to distinguish between truth and fiction. Until one evening he confides his story to the narrator of this novel... The fictional narrative takes us into the heart of Russian power, where courtiers and oligarchs wage war against each other, and where Vadim, who has become the regime's most important spin doctor, transforms an entire country into a political avant-garde theater. But Vadim is not an ambitious man like the others, and as he becomes increasingly drawn into the dark secrets of the regime – the regime he himself helped to build – he will do anything to get away from it. The Puppet Master in the Kremlin, where we meet Limonov and Kasparov, businessmen, photo models, and all the regime's key figures, is a sublime meditation on power.

“We know neither what's good for us nor what's bad. But we're free to decide on the meaning of the things that do happen. And that's our one and only strength.”