An Interview with Portugal’s Expresso Newspaper
Was there anything in Salazar’s writings that impressed/surprised you? I wouldn’t say that anything “impressed” me, beyond that one of his books, Doctrine and A
10 Things I Learned From Reading Terrible Books Written by Dictators
The 20th century’s most infamous dictators were also authors, often prolific ones, complementing the atrocities they visited on humanity with crimes against literature. For h
Daniel Kalder: The Nervous Breakdown Self-Interview
So, I hear you’ve written another book. That’s right. It’s called The Infernal Library and it’s a study of dictator literature, that is to say boo
Ask the Expert: Anti-Tourism
Daniel Kalder is the author of two of my favorite books of the 21st Century: Lost Cosmonaut: Observations of an Anti-Tourist and Strange Telescopes: Following the Apocalypse fr
Lost Territories
I Soul It is well-known that when Lenin died in 1924 his brain was extracted from his skull and subsequently dissected by Soviet scientists who sought to reveal the source of his
On Russian Balconies
On a recent visit to Istanbul I stayed in an apartment looking out on the Bosphorus. Every morning I’d get up and see the sun sparkling on the surface of the water as birds circl
Kremlin Kids Gone Wild!
Life is not easy for the offspring of dictators. Look at Gaddafi’s kids, who are either dead, in prison or in exile. Bashar al-Assad would have been an ophthalmologist if his eld
Movie Nights with Stalin
Stalin, like all murderous totalitarian tyrants, was big on secrecy. It’s therefore probably a safe bet to assume that he would not have been best pleased had he learned that one
Review: Limonov by Emmanuel Carrere
In 1974, poet and dandy Edward Limonov left the Soviet Union to live in the United States. The bisexual, bespectacled son of a secret policeman was fond of the Ramones, fascinated
Review: The Romanov Sisters
The extent to which readers will enjoy Helen Rappaport’s The Romanov Sisters will most likely depend on one or two important factors. First, it will help if you haven’t spent m