A world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality

Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia 

by Peter Pomerantsev







An Amazon Best Book of the Month, November 2014: 

When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 90s, the West rejoiced with the relief that came with the end of the Cold War and the possibility of an era of peace and cooperation. At the same time, its corporations and conglomerates trained a beady eye toward its newly opened markets, and a seemingly virgin economic landscape soon became home to icons such as Coke and McDonalds and Levi’s. But the door was open wide, and tagging along with big business were some seedier characters: organized crime, a youth-and-glamour-obsessed oligarchy, and an entertainment complex hungry for the new concepts of its Western counterparts. That’s where Peter Pomerantsev comes in. Born in Kiev but raised in Great Britain, Pomerantsev returned to Russia as a consultant to its burgeoning film and television—especially “reality” television—industries. What he found was a capitalist’s wet dream: an unfettered cash and service economy with no apparent limits on cash or available services--one where everything is possible, if you can pay for it. At the top of it all sits Vlad Putin, infusing the old TASS tactics with Hollywood flair to create a vision of a bare-chested (bear-chested?) virility and power, of both self and state. Pomerantsev finds himself gazing deeper into this looking-glass world—willingly and otherwise—and he finds it impossible to look away, as will his readers. This is not your father’s Russia, and yet it kind of is.--Jon Foro

Review

An Amazon.com Best Book of the Month, November 2014

“Captivating…keen observations”—New York Times Book Review

“Sparkling collection of essays”—Wall Street Journal

“Enthralling… his exquisite rendering of mind-control techniques is chilling.”—Times Literary Supplement

“This is a gripping and unsettling account of life in grim post-Soviet Russia.”—Washington Post

"Brilliant collection of sketches...powerful, moving and sometimes hilarious"—Washington Times

“Hauntingly perceptive and beautifully written”—New Statesman (UK)

"[A] tale of descending into and eventually emerging from Moscow’s hallucinogenic reality.”—Foreign Affairs

“[A] riveting, urgent book ... Pomerantsev is one of the most perceptive, imaginative and entertaining commentators writing on Russia today and, much like the country itself, his first book is seductive and terrifying in equal measure.” —The Times (UK)

“A scintillating take on a twisted reality”—Prospect Magazine

“Everything you know about Russia is wrong, according to this eye-opening, mind-bending memoir of a TV producer caught between two cultures… the stylish rendering of the Russian culture, which both attracts and appalls the author, will keep the reader captivated.”—Kirkus, STARRED

"Sometimes horrifying but always compelling, this book exposes the bizarre reality hiding beneath the facade of a ‘youthful, bouncy, glossy country.'"—Publishers Weekly

“It is hard to think of another work that better describes today’s Russia; Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible may very well be the defining book about the Putin era. This might seem like excessive praise for a relatively short, non-academic memoir by a reality-TV producer now living in London, but it is justified by the author’s gimlet eye and reportorial skill."—Commentary Magazine

“A brilliant, entertaining, and ultimately tragic book about not only Russia, but the West.”—Tablet Magazine,

“This is the strangest book of note I have ever read… a dark and grotesque comedy of manners… His reporter’s straightforward and unlimited curiosity, his willingness to plow and harrow the widest fields for facts, and his exacting descriptive details give him credibility. Plus, what he tells us is so incredible.” —World Affairs Journal

“A riveting portrait of the new Russia with all its corruption, willful power and spasms of unforgettable, poetic glamor. I couldn't put it down.”—Tina Brown

“Peter Pomeranzev, one of the most brilliant observers of Putin's Russia, describes a country obsessed with illusion and glamor, but with a dangerous, amoral core beneath the surface. Nothing is True and Everything is Possible is an electrifying, terrifying book.”—Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag and Iron Curtain, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction

“Startling, original, and totally gripping. Pomerantsev takes us to the ripe, rotten heart of post-Soviet Russia—a godforsaken gangster town, a prison where people are locked away on a whim—places we couldn’t have seen without his piercing vision. It is a story told in language at once lovely and disconcerting, by a man who knows the place with a fierce intimacy.” —Tunku Varadarajan, former editor, Newsweek International; research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution