The Wizard of the Kremlin, by Giuliano da Empoli review: 'a convincing picture of Putin's world'

This novel is a reminder that fiction at its best can offer a deeper understanding of politics than any academic essay, writes Allan Massie

Vladimir Putin | Grigory Sysoyev /Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images

This is a remarkable novel, an imaginative account of how Vladimir Putin's Russia came to be what it is. The Italian-Swiss author writes in French and has been a special adviser to an Italian Prime Minister - not the present one.

When the novel's narrator arrives in Moscow, the so-called Wizard in the Kremlin, Vadim Baranov, has resigned from his job as Putin's advisor and creator of alternative news and disappeared, although he still occasionally posts cryptic messages on social media under a pseudonym.

However, a post by the young Western narrator, a student in Moscow, catches the attention of this recluse, who invites him to visit. He is taken to a house deep in the forest, one which has a rich library, created by Baranov's aristocratic grandfather who - remarkably - lived unmolested through the Stalin years. This is the necessary (and enjoyable) framework. The rest of the narrative is Baranov's story.

It begins with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the wild years which followed. The young Baranov, working in TV, devising fantasies, is spotted by the oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Russia is in chaos and the president Boris Yeltsin is a staggering drunk, mocked and made a fool of by the Americans. Russia needs a new leader, and Berezovsky has his candidate, a rather dim former KGB man called Vladimir Putin. Young Baranov will provide Russia with the necessary "story", both words and images, and Berezovsky will pull the strings and flourish.

As we know, it didn't work out like that: the new Tsar was no puppet and Berezovsky would be first exiled to London and then, years later, more completely eliminated. Meanwhile, Baranov continues to supply the new Tsar with words and pictures for another 20 years, before withdrawing to his grandfather's forest retreat.

What follows is the story of the Putin years seen from what is, for us, an unusual angle. We all know that Putin has called the collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Union the great tragedy of the 20th Century, and of course this seems absurd to us in the West. But here we see things from Putin's point of view, which is also that of many Russians. We forget, if we ever knew, that Stalin remains the most admired of Russian leaders, heir to Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great and the hero of the Great Patriotic War. The young KGB man, now president, comes to see himself as Stalin's first legitimate heir, determined to avenge the humiliation Russia has suffered. His reign is founded in criminality and fake news, but the author gives us an understanding of what made Putin what he is.

Baranov, an admirer of so much of Western culture, nevertheless shares Putin's resentment. He too sees the West as engaged in the determined weakening of Russia; he too sees Ukraine as a historical part of Russia - wasn't Kiev the first capital of the Rus’?

The author's ability to identify and understand, even at times sympathise with the Russian sense of being cheated by the West makes this novel a remarkable and very convincing picture of Putin's world. He offers a compelling picture of the Russian view of history and power politics, and offers a keener understanding of how an undistinguished KGB agent, devoid of personal charisma, became the ruthless Tsar that we all recognize but mostly fail to understand.

The novel also offers a picture of a corrupt and horrible regime, a picture all the more effective because it is founded in understanding. Putin is Stalin's heir, certainly, and the author shows us how he has made himself this, but there is something of Hitler in him too - the Hitler of whom Orwell once wrote that he had never been able to dislike as a person because he understood how he saw himself as the little man who had been cheated and humiliated by the world.

As a novel, this is a rich and rather wonderful piece of art. As something which opens the way to an understanding of why Russia today is what it is, it is a book that all who care for the realities of world politics may read with advantage. It is a literary novel which has great historical and literary force, a reminder also that the novel at its best can offer an understanding of politics that goes deeper than any academic essay.

The Wizard of the Kremlin, by Giuliano da Empoli, trans. William Wood, Pushkin Press, £9.99