‘A remarkable, sly blend of memoir and history, past and present, amusement and bemusement. How the memoir of a Dutch writer selling bibles in Russia also becomes the story of our past century is beyond me. But in Waterdrinker’s masterful hands, it does. The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street is a spectacular tale, and a towering achievement.’
Shalom Auslander, author of Mother for Dinner
‘Russia’s recent history has been inspirational and unpredictable, tragic and bizarre, and it takes a quirky literary autobiography like this to capture that. From showing the Russian president’s wife through Amsterdam’s red-light district to wheeling and dealing in the dying days of the USSR, Waterdrinker offers up an eminently readable and critically affectionate vision of a Russia constantly in the throes of reinvention.’
Professor Mark Galeotti, author of A Short History of Russia
‘Waterdrinker’s gift for savage comedy and his war correspondent’s eye have few contemporary equivalents.’
Simon Ings, The Times
‘Engrossing … grips you and doesn’t let go.’
Matthew Janney, The Spectator
‘A gripping memoir by one of Holland’s most admired novelists … a valuable historical document of the era.’
Rupert Christiansen, The Telegraph
‘A disarming, erudite, shocking, laugh-out-loud Dutch bestseller.’
Rory Maclean, TLS
‘Peter Waterdrinker’s experiences of Russia over the past quarter century are undoubtedly worth telling … his descriptions are evocative.’
Owen Matthews, Catholic Herald
‘Words by Waterdrinker are as amazing as a superior circus’
Elsevier
‘How evocatively Waterdrinker can write! A hundred years after the Russian Revolution, he makes this violent period of history shine once again.’
Zin
‘I really enjoyed it … it spoke to my own experiences.’
Mark Galeotti, The Spectator TV
‘A wonderful, page-turning narrative … fascinating and endlessly readable … Waterdrinker is a gifted storyteller.’
Donal O’Keeffe, Irish Examiner
‘An evocative personal history of smuggling and surviving.’
Foyles
‘In this compelling memoir … Waterdrinker recounts the awful and at the same time great decades that gave Russians a radically redefined role on the world stage … An intensely personal perspective on geopolitical transformation.’
Bryce Christensen, Booklist, starred review
‘An octogenarian aristocrat cooped up in a decrepit Soviet madhouse, doctors requiring bribes before even considering treating patients, the wife of a Russian president touring Amsterdam's red-light district, lust-driven physicists embezzling foreign aid programs, the mad monk Rasputin. These are just a handful of the memorable characters Pieter Waterdrinker draws in his idiosyncratic, darkly humorous, captivating blend of memoir, history, and reportage that spans Russia's last century. It's a terrific read that will engage and inform in equal measure.’
Gordon Peake, The Canberra Times
‘[Waterdrinker] interweaves memoir and history in this impressionistic account of Russia from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution to the present day … [he] incisively captures the beauty and terror of his adopted country … Russophiles will savour this iconoclastic portrait of modern Russia.’
Publishers Weekly
Praise for Lenin's Balsem:
‘A book with an exotic elegance.’
de Volkskrant
Praise for Lenin's Balsem:
‘A hilarious quest, written in a wonderful baroque style.’
De Telegraaf
Praise for The Death of Mila Burger:
‘In many respects The Death of Mila Burger is a novel about twenty-first-century Russia, dished up according to the laws of the nineteenth-century novel. Fluent, expressive, amusing.’
NRC Handelsblad
Praise for The Death of Mila Burger:
‘The Death of Mila Burger is a classic tragedy. It is quality prose. Exuberant in a rather un-Dutch way.’
Vrij Nederland
