Martin Sixsmith – författare

Brought to you by Penguin.''I''m a fairly calm fellow; I don''t usually get het up about things. But I was, let''s say, concerned when I tuned into the Moscow Echo radio station and heard that the Kremlin had put a price on my head. The announcement didn''t quite say ''dead or alive''. But it came close...'' Mikhail Khodorkovsky, March 2021Mikhail Khodorkovsky has seen behind the mask of Vladimir Putin. Once an oil tycoon and the richest man in Russia, Khodorkovsky spoke out against the corruption of Putin''s regime - and was punished by the Kremlin, stripped of his entire wealth and jailed for over ten years.Now freed, working as a pro-democracy campaigner in enforced exile, Khodorkovsky brings us the insider''s battle to save his country''s soul. Offering an urgent analysis of what has gone wrong with Putin, The Russia Conundrum maps the country''s rise and fall against Khodorkovsky''s own journey, from Soviet youth to international oil executive, powerful insider to political dissident, and now a high-profile voice seeking to reconcile East and West.With unparalleled insight, written with Sunday Times bestselling author Martin Sixsmith, The Russia Conundrum exposes the desires and damning truths of Putin''s Russia, and provides an answer to the West on how it must challenge the Kremlin - in order to pave the way for a better future.© Mikhail Khodorkovsky & Martin Sixsmith 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Since his re-election as US president, Donald Trump has made good on things he only dreamed of accomplishing in his first term. He has smashed constitutional constraints, trampled on free speech, suborned the judiciary, demonised the media and crushed protests on the streets. He has secured the backing of America’s oligarchs by the offer of mutual enrichment and inflated his personal wealth by flouting ethical standards. US foreign policy is no longer based on values but on greed, while at home the White House has intervened in almost every area of people’s lives, sending the National Guard into America’s cities, telling educators what schoolchildren should be taught and threatening universities when they beg to differ.According to Martin Sixsmith, the BBC’s long-serving former Moscow and Washington Correspondent, it is all eerily familiar from what Russia went through in the early-2000s.Despots is Sixsmith's account of how two aspiring dictators came to power in nominally electoral democracies then dismantled the pillars of democracy from within, one following confidently in the footsteps of the other. As in Putin's Russia, so in Trump's America: the US is fast-forwarding through what Russia endured in the first five years under Putin, and the parallels this time are much clearer, more overt and increasingly terrifying.Praise for Martin Sixsmith“To read Sixsmith is to want to read more Sixsmith” - FORBES“Sixsmith has the knack of delivering complex material with a clear voice” - THE TIMES“The virtue and originality of Martin Sixsmith’s The War on Nerves is to see almost every aspect of the stand-off in psychological terms” - THE ECONOMIST“The Russia Conundrum is essential reading for anyone who really wants to understand 21st century Russia” - BUSINESS INSIDER"Highly engaging . . . thrillingly told . . . My Sins Go With Me is a powerful story of a history that remains far from settled" - DAILY TELEGRAPH