Book review: Political novel the real Tsar of the show

Giuliano da Empoli's 'The Wizard of the Kremlin' is a riveting debut novel already translated into 40 languages

Giuliano da Empoli offers a glimpse into Putin’s political world. Picture: Atilano Garcia/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

• The Wizard of the Kremlin 
• Giuliano Da Empoli 
• Translated from the French by Willard Wood 
• Pushkin Press, €17.99 

Vladimir Putin does not appear in this pacy, clever, and engaging novel until more than 80 pages have passed. By that point his absence has become a brooding presence.

That engineering captures the essence of this elegant page-turner, at once an echo chamber recycling one truth or another, and a prism separating the primary colours in Russia’s recent history. 

It offers views that may or may not be true, but leaves no doubt about the stakes facing those who imagined that the fall of the Soviet Union was the end of the autocracies that — in one sable coat or another — subjugated Russia and its neighbours since Vlad the Impaler was a boy pulling the wings off flies.

Told through the voice of Vadim Baranov, a retired political fixer and strategist who facilitated Putin’s — referred throughout as The Tsar, in an acceptance of reality — rise to absolute power after the USSR collapsed.

It concludes in the days just before the invasion of Ukraine. In that time, Baranov worked with many figures who amassed incomprehensible fortunes in Putin’s orbit.

Da Empoli, in a riveting debut novel already translated into 40 languages, uses real people and versions of their lives to try to understand — and warn about — the feral simplicity of Putin’s methods.

He uses the experiences of businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an exiled opposition leader who lives in London, to tell part of that chilling story.

He gives Boris Berezovsky a part too. Berezovsky, ultimately an opponent of Putin, was found hanging in his Ascot home in March, 2013. A postmortem examination concluded that there were no signs of a violent struggle.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the caterer turned Wagner mercenary chief, also features — at least he did until he had his Icarus moment last August.

There are others used as reference points too, but Putin is the heartbeat and object of this novel.

His enigmatic character, his feline coldness, his paranoia, and even his presentation of himself to the world all make forming a reliable impression difficult and risky.

However, one episode does give a clue. A poll is held among Russians to find who they regard as their greatest leader. Stalin, despite his millions of murders, gets the gong.

A voice in the novel suggests that Stalin is so revered because he was so strong and defended Mother Russia — so Putin uses that logic to be as forcefully anti-democratic as he is. 

Or, more likely, he uses it as an excuse to send his assassins to murder opponents — no matter where they may be.

Baranov used the poll to give an insight into his interpretation and use of history: “Manage the anger and you can manage the people” — a tactic all too alive in towns around Ireland today.

There are a myriad of novels about power achieved and power maintained, and the kind of people who can accomplish that, but this important novel is of the moment and is likely to remain so as long as Putin is in power.

Russia’s constitution was changed in 2020, so he can stay in office until 2036.

Now that nicety is out of the way, as if it mattered, the excellent Wizard of the Kremlin offers as good an insight as any into one of our world’s most volatile, corrupt, and dangerous dictators.

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