The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin

Masha Gessen's book "The Man Without a Face" reveals how Vladimir Putin, a low-level KGB operative, rose to power in Russia and destroyed years of progress, making Russia a threat to its people and the world. She shows how he dismantled Russia's media, wrested control and wealth from the business class, and silenced opposing voices.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 336 pages
Publication date: 03 August 2023
Publisher: Granta Publications Ltd

A luminous study, Luke Harding's Guardian Courageous and shocking Katy Guest, Books of the Year, Independent on Sunday. How did a small-minded, low-level KGB operative come to control the world's largest country and, in an astonishingly short time, destroy years of progress, making Russia once more a threat to her own people and to the world? Masha Gessen shows that when Vladimir Putin, an unimportant, low-level KGB operative, was rushed to power by a group of Oligarchs in 1999, he was a man without a history. Yet within a few brief years, he had dismantled Russia's media, wrested control and wealth from the country's burgeoning business class, and decimated the fragile mechanisms of democracy. Virtually every opposing voice was silenced, with political rivals and critics driven into exile or to the grave. Drawing on information and sources no other writer has tapped, Masha Gessen's fearless account charts Putin's rise from the boy who had scrapped his way through post-war Leningrad schoolyards. Now the faceless man who manoeuvred his way into absolute - and absolutely corrupt - power, has become a threat to the stability of the world, and this important book is more relevant than ever. Now with a new preface by the author.

A clear, brave book, Gessen offers intriguing details of the scratching, biting, hair-tearing, undersized, brawling boy Putin, refusing to be bullied in the grubby backyards of Leningrad. James Meek, Observer. Gessen's engaging prose combines a native's passion with a mordant wit and caustic understatement that are characteristically Russian. AD Miller, Daily Telegraph.

Weight: 232g
Dimension: 129 x 199 x 27 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781803510491