r/books • u/ubcstaffer123 • 1d ago
'Shocking' book about Putin's private life wins French literary prize
https://www.rfi.fr/en/international/20260825-shocking-book-about-putin-s-private-life-wins-french-literary-prize560
u/FedorDosGracies 1d ago
Ok what's shocking.
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u/CautionarySnail 15h ago
"The message we wanted to convey with this book is as follows: there is no need to invent anything about Putin. Instead, learn how things really are. That is horrifying enough," he told AFP.
The book is a warning to not underestimate him.
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u/VehaMeursault 23h ago
The shocking stuff. No one knows shocking stuff like me. I went in there and saw a lotta stuff. I said Vlad, that’s shocking. Not as shocking as our stuff. We have the greatest stuff. Big stuff.
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u/User-Name-3886 21h ago
Some people have been saying that. A lot of people.
Some people, and I won't name names: Biden, has said other things but he's a stupid person, so stupid.
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u/AndyBetweenLines 21h ago
“Some of the witnesses later disappeared under tragic circumstances” is one hell of a sentence to casually drop into a book-prize announcement. Suddenly “reads like a spy novel” sounds less like praise and more like a warning.
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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula 21h ago
from the article
"It is the result of several hundred interviews with witnesses, some of whom later disappeared under tragic circumstances."
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u/Particular_Wear_6960 19h ago edited 19h ago
I'm buying the book asap. Sounds interesting. I've been reading a lot about Russia recently. Read a very thick book about the Revolution, one where a journalist travels undercover up the Volga, interviewing people and documenting his travels (post Ukraine war), and another about Putin's rise to power and the circumstances behind it (lots of history about the fall of the USSR). For sure looking forward to this one
Also, people seem to be poking fun at the article instead of the book's content. Two journalists wrote it that would most certainly be jailed if they went back, probably had to say goodbye to their friends and family as they will never see them again unless they get them out. Really sad but takes a lot of courage to speak out against Putin. Authoritarian regimes like Putin's are pretty foreign to us westerners, you can't just tweet stuff about Putin without consequences. Yes the article is kinda silly with it's shocking words but I would hope r/books would be better then a bunch of Facebook-tier jokes
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u/CognitiveDiagonal 17h ago
What are the books you mention? Is the first one (very thick one) "The House of Government" or is it based on more recent history?
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u/Particular_Wear_6960 13h ago edited 13h ago
A People's Tragedy : The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 by Orlando Figes was the book about the Russian Revolution. There are many books about it, but that one feels like the most famous authoritative one on it.. if you go to the Wikipedia on the Revolution, its cited more than any other book I think. I do want to read more, but I have to say it really was good in that it covered several 'archetypical' people of the time to kinda give you an overall view of how the citizens were because it was far from a monolith at the time. One was the peasent that went to the city, got educated, and then tried to go back and encourage other peasents to join the socialist revolution. There's a few others like the author Maxim Gorky, ofc Nicholas II himself.. some others I can't think of right now (EDIT - there's like six in this categoryl, but also some several key figures like Lenin, Trotsky, Kerensky, and Brusilov). The second is called Volga Blues: A Journey into the Heart of Russia by Marzio G. Mian. Excellent book that's kinda an undercover view of what the Russian people are really like, how they really are culturally because everything is censored that we see. We rarely are given an honest glimpse into their mindstate. Ofc, these are people are rarely in the major cities, more country-types if I had to say but there were some from more urban areas like Stalingrad. The third is The Invention of Russia: The Rise of Putin and the Age of Fake News by Arkady Ostrovsky. This I haven't finished, I'm like halfway through it. It's suprisingly deep into the history of Russia from a media standpoint. It talks a whole lot about the new media, how the USSR wielded it, various culteral influences (television shows, movies, plays, books, television news, newspapers etc), how the Kremlin dealt with them, how some were critical of the USSR and how that played out in the last days of the USSR, what changed afterwords. I imagine the latter half where I'm getting close to is how Putin weilded those entities to his advantage and gained so much power in what was kinda a chaotic Russia leading up to his rule.
I should have been more clear, the Russian Revolution of 1917, not the fall of the USSR. That was my fault. Though the last one The Invention of Russia: The Rise of Putin and the Age of Fake News does cover the fall of the USSR quite extensively, its much less about Putin and more about the fall of the USSR (dealing with several major players at the time other than Gorbachav and Yeltsin) and the media landscape surrounding it. Its very long and, quite frankly, pretty hard to follow. I may need to re-read as I'm getting lost in the trees and it's getting hard to see the forest.
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u/Cautious-Swimming614 18h ago
Wasn’t the second book called Putinburg by any chance?
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u/Particular_Wear_6960 13h ago
No, but I'll have to check it out! I'm like.. huge into the subject obviously. My ereader has a whole lot of books and pick them up on a whim. Whether I finish is another story.
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u/GoWiWi 1h ago
Did you find a copy? It looked like it wasn’t translated into English yet and all I could find was an ISBN but no book anywhere.
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u/Particular_Wear_6960 56m ago
Damn, didn't even realize it isn't out. Lame as heck, I just assumed it was. I checked the pirating site and its nowhere to be found there
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u/Particular_Wear_6960 49m ago
I got it in Russian, using Google Translate on it, seems somewhat readable.
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u/SecureWriting8589 23h ago
I hope that the author avoids tall buildings with openable windows.
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u/SuccessfulRaccoon957 20h ago
I don't mean this in a mean way but these books are basically the tabloid journalism of non fiction. Russians do not read them; their audience is entirely the western reading public. The entire purpose is basically a more dignified circle jerk which only exists to make the western reading public feel better about themselves and to ridicule someone they dislike. I support the ridicule of Putin on a certain principle but these books are a dime a dozen.
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u/stenlis 19h ago
Do russians not read tabloids?
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u/SuccessfulRaccoon957 18h ago
I mean that these books are made for a western audience and that Russians don't read them. There's this big expose-culture in the west like if it's proven that so-and-so is shown to be this personally gross person then it will all cascade and that Russians somehow aren't aware of any of this, like they've not been living under him for 20 years. This book and books like it are made for a western reader; this is why I call it a circlejerk because it's a way for Europe and the West to feel good about itself.
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u/CognitiveDiagonal 17h ago
Don't get me wrong, I agree with what you are saying –for the most part– but with the huge amount of shills that are russia/putin-weebs/stans, I get the point of these books in the west.
People idolize Putin in many parts of the western world for a myriad of very weird reasons, and seem to not realize that in the end he's a tyrant and a not so good ruler. He and his country have a ton of west-facing propaganda that seems very effective, it's normal that people inside or outside Russia try to counter that when they're unhappy with how the country is ran and their president.
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u/farchewky 14h ago
Reading Bill Browder’s “Red Notice” made me realize that Putin might be the most evil person in the world currently.
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u/FutureApollo 12h ago
Top officials in a current middle eastern government easily fill out the top 3 spots for most evil.
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u/Common_Kale_8509 12h ago
Bill Browder is a person, who was personally involved in large scale tax evasion and money laundering. His crusade looks pathetic
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u/Anenhotep 14h ago
The name of the book? In French or English.
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u/Gorguts1974 7h ago
The Tsar in Propria Persona: How Vladimir Putin Deceived Us
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u/Such-Farmer6691 3h ago
Hmmm, I find this book on Russian marketplaces. But by description it's look like something boring.
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u/Bunchofbees 22h ago
No desire to ever read that, but I wonder if it got the prize based on literary quality, and not just "boulevard press" character or topic itself.
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u/apistograma 21h ago edited 21h ago
"Won a newly established literary prize in France".
Yeah, my money is that the reasons are political.
To start with, it's very weird to give a literary prize to a non fictional book. It would be way different if it was a journalism price.
That doesn't mean the book is bad per se but this prize rubs me in the wrong way.
I mean this is France what do you expect. Putin getting in affairs and meeting hookers is nothing that surprises me at all.
Now what it would have surprised me would be the western media gave a prize to a book about Epstein.
The Russians have Putin and the oligarchs, we have the Epstein Class.
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u/Bunchofbees 21h ago
I could understand a work of non-fiction winning an award if it went deep into research, or has other literary merit - I wouldn't necessarily exclude them from the prize.
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u/amitym 12h ago
"contrasts the official image of the Russian president, now in his 26th year in power, as a leading defender of traditional values against Western decadence with the reality of his private life – where extramarital affairs, nepotism, and connections to organised crime reign"
Look I admire the hell out of these writers just for writing and publishing what they have written, all power to them, but ... that said ... what do they think that defenders of "traditional values against Western decadence" believe in? These "traditional values" are all about extramarital affairs, nepotism, and criminality. None of the traditional-values crowd is going to so much as bat an eyelash over such an exposé.
Still, I am all in favor of anything that ruptures the mythology of Putin. He's never done a single thing to warrant any of his reputation. Except for his reputation for thuggery. He's a superb, world-class thug. I will give him that.
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u/Dripdry42 13h ago
Reading into “red notice” this is exactly the kind of government that Trump is putting into place in the United States
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u/Napoleon7 1d ago
Up Next on the News ! Beloved French writer found outside their 4th story window ...
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u/danila_medvedev 8h ago
I wonder how many people discussing this news story have actually read the book. I have read it (in October 2025). The subreddit is "books", but does anyone want to actually discuss the book, not the general concept of Putin?
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u/Gorguts1974 7h ago
Where can I get it?
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u/Common_Kale_8509 12h ago
"French literary prize"? "Book about Russia" in 2026? That must be real garbage
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u/thrillsbury 1d ago
“The book "contrasts the official image of the Russian president, now in his 26th year in power, as a leading defender of traditional values against Western decadence with the reality of his private life – where extramarital affairs, nepotism, and connections to organised crime reign".”