The Holy Thief – Background

A detailed description of the origins of The Holy Thief is on its way but in the meantime, here’s a bibliography for those interested in reading more about the period the novel is set in.

Sheila Fitzpatrick Everyday Stalinism (Oxford 1999)

Robert Edelman “Serious Fun – A history of Spectator Sports in the USSR” (Oxford 1993) A.N. Pirozhkova “At his Side – The Last Years of Isaac Babel” (Steerforth 1996)

Vitaly Shentalinsky “The KGB’s Literary Archive” (Harvell 1993)

Danzig Baldaev (and others) “Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia Vols 1-3” (Steidl/Fuel 2003) (Fuel 2006)) (Fuel 2008)).

Anne Applebaum GULAG – A History of the Soviet Camps (Allen Lane 2003)

Orlando Figes The Whisperers (Allen Lane 2007)

Hiroaki Kuromiya The Voices of the Dead (Yale 2007)

Jochen Hellbeck Revolution on my Mind – writing a Diary under Stalin (Harvard 2006), Catherine Merridale Night of Stone – Death and Memory in Russia (Granta 2000)

Garros, Korenevskaya and Lahusen Intimacy and Terror – Soviet Diaries of the 1930s (New Press 1995)

Simon Sebag Montefiore “Stalin – The Court of the Red Tsar” (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 2003)

Frederick Starr Red and Hot – The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union (Oxford 1983)

Sheila Fitzpatrick Tear off the Masks – Identity and Imposture in Twentieth Century Russia (Princeton 2005)

Marc Jansen and Nikita Petrov Stalin’s Loyal Executioner – People’s Commissioner Nikolai Ezhov (Hoover 2002)

Jukka Gronow Caviar with Champagne – Common Luxury and the Ideals of the Good Life in Stalin’s Russia (Berg 2003)

David King Red Star over Russia – A Visual History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Death of Stalin (Tate 2009)