'A gripping thriller and Belkin is a character many readers will want to encounter again' THE TIMES
'A heartbreaking and passionate novel of the cruelty and fragility of love, death and life in Stalinist Russia' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE
Moscow, 1934.
Moscow's glittering new subway is under construction at last. The first line will run through the centre of the city, cutting deep through Moscow soil. But futures cannot be created without digging up the past. Though Russia's leaders want to build a glorious Soviet capital, what holds them in a fatal grip is history: old mud and bones.
Anton Belkin is an Investigator at the Procuracy, a sensitive job at a dangerous moment on the road to the Show Trials. He is also someone who needs to keep his head down. His artist father was once the darling of the revolutionary avant-garde, a painter whose work could inspire devotion and great sacrifice. But now his dreams are out of place, too loud and red in Stalin's world of sterile rules and rubber stamps.
Anton is dragged into a murder case. A prominent archaeologist, working alongside the subway dig, has been killed in a deserted mansion. Though Anton doesn't want the job, his former lover, Vika, who is now a powerful member of the secret police, browbeats him into paying a visit to the site with her. Against his better judgement he is drawn to follow though, embarking on investigations that will almost certainly get him killed.
Deep underground, he finds a priceless secret that could genuinely unlock the future but links him to a vicious internecine fight for power in the young Soviet state. In the process, he is forced to reconsider the history he shares with Vika and the bonds that bind them both.
Moscow Underground is a sweeping novel of life, death and politics in the quicksand world of Stalin's tyranny.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
'A gripping thriller and Belkin is a character many readers will want to encounter again'
The Times
'Gripping, moving and fascinating. A heartbreaking and passionate novel of the cruelty and fragility of love, death and life in Stalinist Russia by a great storyteller who also happens to be an outstanding historian. I loved it' Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of the Moscow Trilogy
'Both a brilliant thriller and a historical record of the ambition, terror and deviousness of that black era in Russian history' Gareth Rubin, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Turnglass
'Catherine Merridale brings to her thriller about a Moscow ripped up by builders and Stalinism not only the requisite skills of a thriller writer, but an exceptional credibility, as a historian with unparalleled knowledge of the times and the city' Donald Rayfield, Emeritus Professor of Russian and Georgian, Queen Mary University of London
'Moscow?s subway system was built to transform an old imperial capital into a modern Soviet metropolis but digging deep in the very heart of an empire can unleash the fates. Moscow Underground excavates the very foundation of the Russian state, a daring journey to the origins of Stalinism, all the more timely because in contemporary Russia the figure of Stalin is making an ominous comeback' Sergei Lebedev, author of The Lady of The Mine
'An enlightening historical thriller that brings Stalin's USSR vividly to life' Charlie English, author of The CIA Book Club
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ISBN-13
978-0-00-876155-4 (9780008761554)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Catherine Merridale is an award-winning writer and broadcaster with an internationally acknowledged expertise in Russia and the former Soviet Union. A pioneer of oral history in the region, her first major book, Night of Stone (Granta, 2000), won the Royal Society of Literature's Heinemann Prize and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2001. More recently, Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia's History (Allen Lane, 2013) won both the Wolfson History Prize and the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize in 2014. Ivan's War (Faber, 2005) tells the stories of ordinary Red Army soldiers in Europe's last great land-based war, while Lenin on the Train (Allen Lane, 2016) tracks Europe's collective and bungling responsibility for the Great October Revolution.
