RaveFinancial Times (UK)Doucet’s telling is far from grim. It’s full of warmth, wit, and a lovely eye for the human stories that make the hotel not just a monument to tragedy, but also love and resilience ... This is the book about an Afghanistan I never knew that I always wanted to read ... What Doucet achieves is both powerful and charming at the same time. The Finest Hotel in Kabul is a meditation on memory, resilience, and the strange intimacy of public spaces.
Serhii Plokhy
PositiveThe Financial TimesHis latest book, Lost Kingdom, tells the story of how the history of Russia was being written when that history was being made ...a singularly fascinating account of Russian nationalism through the ages ... Plokhy focuses on Russia’s western frontier as both a psychological and geographical boundary that has always been a critical determinant of Russian national identity ...shows that the intellectual outcomes of the way nationalism was discussed mattered as much or more than the physical events on the ground.
Masha Gessen
PositiveThe Financial TimesIn The Future is History, Gessen argues that nationalism and reactionary ideology arrived through the backdoor of a Soviet system that had never really collapsed ... Gessen chronicles the political crackdown that began after Putin’s return for a third term as president through the lives of four people who were among the first victims, their lives drastically changed for the worse ...the book flits vertiginously, almost manically, between their stories. This nevertheless works, the way a Russian novel weaves history through the lives of its characters ... Much of the book focuses on the decline of social sciences and the corruption of higher learning amid political projects.
