Archangel - Hardcover

Harris, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091779243 ISBN 13: 9780091779245

Publisher: Hutchinson, 1998

Synopsis

Present-day Russia is the setting for this stunning new novel from Robert Harris, author of the bestsellers "Fatherland" and "Enigma," Archangel tells the story of four days in the life of Fluke Kelso, a dissipated, middle-aged former Oxford historian, who is in Moscow to attend a conference on the newly opened Soviet archives. One night, Kelso is visited in his hotel room by an old NKVD officer, a former bodyguard of the secret police chief Lavrenty Beria. The old man claims to have been at Stalin's dacha on the night Stalin had his fatal stroke, and to have helped Beria steal the dictator's private papers, among them a notebook. Kelso decides to use his last morning in Moscow to check out the old man's story. But what starts as an idle inquiry in the Lenin Library soon turns into a murderous chase across nighttime Moscow and up to northern Russia--to the vast forests near the White Sea port of Archangel, where the final secret of Josef Stalin has been hidden for almost half a century. Archangel combines the imaginative sweep and dark suspense of Fatherland with the meticulous historical detail of Enigma. The result is Robert Harris's most compelling novel yet. "From the Paperback edition."

About this title

Review:

Before political journalist Robert Harris turned to fiction and resurrected Hitler for his best selling novel Fatherland, he also wrote a hugely entertaining account of the farce surrounding the publication of the hoax Hitler diaries. Archangel, with the obvious exception of substituting Hitler for that other 20th-century ogre Josef Stalin, can be seen as something of a combination of these previous projects. The novel opens in present-day Russia where a louche Oxford academic, Christopher "Fluke" Kelso, is attending a conference on the newly available Stalin archives. Kelso quickly becomes embroiled in a quest for some of Uncle Joe's still secret papers--and also a quest to make his own academic reputation--but soon uncovers more than he bargains for. The ghosts of the old authoritarian past exert a peculiar and all too powerful tug on Yeltsin's fragile capitalist democracy and as Kelso is drawn ever nearer to the secret that lies in the remote White Sea port of Archangel so the tragedies of the past become hideously more plausible in the present. Harris is historically sound, politically astute and his acute insight into the apparatus of state repression and minds of despots is unnerving. But most of all he tells a terrific yarn and Archangel sees him on top form. This is his best yet.--Nick Wroe

Review:

Praise for ENIGMA "Elegant, atmospheric . . . a tense and thoughtful thriller." --"San Francisco Chronicle" "Literate and savvy . . . It's always a pleasure to encounter a historical thriller this subtle and detailed. . . . [ ] brims with wartime intrigue and paranoia." --"The Washington Post Book World" FATHERLAND "A stunning debut." --"Boston Globe" "An elegant thriller, a thoughtful, frightening story of complicity." --"San Francisco Chronicle" "An absorbing, expertly written novel." --"The New York Times"

About this edition

• Publisher: Hutchinson
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0091779243
• ISBN 13: 9780091779245
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432