Handpicked in 1999 by the Family surrounding an ailing & increasingly unpopular Boris Yeltsin Vladimir Putin with very little governmental or administrative experience beyond having served as deputy mayor of St Petersburg seemed like the perfect choice in the eyes of an oligarchy bent on moulding the presidents successor to its own designs. Suddenly the boy who had scrapped his way through post-war Leningrad schoolyards dreaming of ruling the world was a public figure & his popularity soared. Russia & an infatuated West were determined to see the progressive leader of their dreams even as with ruthless efficiency Putin dismantled the countrys media wrested control & wealth from the countrys burgeoning business class & decimated the fragile mechanisms of democracy. Within a few brief years virtually every obstacle to his unbridled control was removed & every opposing voice silenced with political rivals & critics driven into exile or to the grave. As a journalist living in Moscow Masha Gessen experienced this history firsthand & for The Man Without a Face she has drawn on information & sources no other writer has tapped. Her horrifying & spellbinding account of how this faceless man manoeuvred his way into absolute
- & absolutely corrupt
- power will stand as a classic of narrative non-fiction.