Stalin, Engl. ed.

"The most civilised and elegant chronicle of brutality and tuhlessness I have ever read" (Daily Telegraph-Books of the year)

'Crammed with grimly revealing anecdotes and hitherto unheard testimony, this is a book that anatomises, with vivid insight and compelling readability, the corruptions of absolute power and the psychology of those who wield it. SUNDAY TIMES 'There is unlikely ever to be a more engrossing account of the life of Joseph Stalin than his huge biography.' -- Charles Osborne SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'As intellectually perceptive as it is horrifically enthralling the book is packed with insights into this ostensibly avuncular paranoid... prodigious in his research, Montefiore tells the grisly story with style and elegance.' -- Christopher Hirst THE INDEPENDENT 'Daily accounts from the breakfast table to the Politburo provide an incisive portrait of the inner workings of a brute's mind.' THE HERALD 'This isn't just a gripping slice of history, but an extraordinary psychological study of a murderous dictator who 'Knew He Was Right.' Here is more love, death and intrigue than you find in any thirller.' INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 'a marvellously racy, gossipy study, based on immense research.' THE EVENING STANDARD 'Simon Sebag Montefiore's writing is caustic and superb and he wears his rigorous scholarship with style.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'This is not simply another book about Stalin. It is a horrifying, hypnotic and at times, darkly amusing account of the lives of the families who ruled the Soviet Union... this page turner captivates and repels in equal measures.' THE OBSERVER 'This book should help purge any lingering nostalgia for the USSR.' IRISH TIMES 'there are plenty of political histories of the Stalinist era, but what makes Simon Sebag Montefiore's grimly fascinating book so special is the intimate protrait he sketches of the Soviet dictator's close circle of family and friends.' MAIL ON SUNDAY