The Pushkin House Book Prize celebrates the best non-fiction writing about Russia. It was established in 2013 to encourage "public understanding and intelligent debate about Russia." The prize aims to highlight "books which combine excellence in research with readability, providing us with a better understanding of Russia's history, culture and its people." The winning author receives a prize of £10,000.
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1
Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin and Russia’s War Against Ukraine
by Owen Matthews -
2
Russia's War
by Jade McGlynn -
3
Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia
by Natasha Lance Rogoff -
4
Places of Tenderness and Heat: The Queer Milieu of Fin-de-Siècle St. Petersburg
by Olga Petri -
5
Cigarettes and Soviets: Smoking in the USSR
by Tricia Starks -
6
Red Leviathan: The Secret History of Soviet Whaling
by Ryan Tucker Jones
The Best Russia Books: The 2023 Pushkin House Prize, recommended by Ekaterina Schulmann
The Best Russia Books: The 2023 Pushkin House Prize, recommended by Ekaterina Schulmann
Since its invasion of Ukraine last year, Russia has been much in the news, with many of us struggling to better understand its politics, history, society and culture. Fortunately, we have the Pushkin House Book Prize, which every year celebrates the best nonfiction written about Russia and available in English. Russian political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann, chair of this year’s judging panel, talks us through the books that made the 2023 shortlist.
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1
The Return of the Russian Leviathan
by Sergei Medvedev & Stephen Dalziel (translator) -
2
Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait
by Bathsheba Demuth -
3
Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future
by Kate Brown -
4
Stalin's Scribe: Literature, Ambition, and Survival, the Life of Mikhail Sholokhov
by Brian Boeck -
5
This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible in Stalin's Russia
by Joan Neuberger -
6
An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent
by Owen Matthews
The Best Russia Books: the 2020 Pushkin House Prize, recommended by Serhii Plokhy
The Best Russia Books: the 2020 Pushkin House Prize, recommended by Serhii Plokhy
Every year since 2013 the Russian Book Prize run by Pushkin House, a UK charity, has carried out the important task of drawing attention to books that “encourage public understanding and intelligent debate about the Russian-speaking world.” Here, Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy, chair of this year’s judging panel, talks us through the books that made the 2020 shortlist.
