Showman

SIMON SHUSTER has reported from Russia and Ukraine for seventeen years, most of that time as a staff writer for Time magazine. His coverage of the war began in 2014, when he arrived in Crimea as Russian troops took over the peninsula. In 2019, he met and interviewed Volodymyr Zelensky for a profile of his presidential campaign, then continued covering his administration in the years that followed – first traveling to the war zone with the president in April 2021, as the Russians gathered their armies at the border. When the full-scale invasion began the following year, Simon spent months embedded with the president’s team, securing unparalleled access to their compound in Kyiv, where he wrote The Showman, his first book.

'Superb… an elegant account of the invasion’s first year as seen by those in the very eye of the storm' Daily Telegraph 'A brilliant piece of extended reportage … Shuster’s book does justice to a complex man, who is fighting our fight as well as his own' The Times 'The most intimate portrait of Zelensky, the man at the center of the world drama, painted by one of the best writers in the field, Simon Shuster. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand what Ukrainians are fighting for and why they will prevail' Serhii Plokhy, author of The Russo-Ukrainian War 'A definitive, thoroughly researched and deeply insightful biography' Guardian 'The Showman surpasses all similar efforts to date and is set to be the standard by which all other works on Mr. Zelensky and Ukraine’s wartime politics will be judged' Wall Street Journal 'This book is a historical milestone. No journalist in recent memory has had such unique access to the people changing our world in real time. Thanks to Simon Shuster and this brilliant, sincere, and truthful book, readers today—and future generations—will have a chance to learn the inside of this war and to understand Volodymyr Zelensky' Mikhail Zygar, author of All the Kremlin's Men 'Using interviews with the Ukrainian president, his closest associates and his critics, Shuster crafts an intimate account of the Russian invasion, which vividly captures Zelensky’s transformation from a clean-cut funnyman into a war hero out of central casting' New York Times Book Review