The Man Without a Face

The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin

Masha Gessen

Granta/Penguin

320 pages, R550

A chilling account of how a small-minded, low-level KGB operative came to control the world’s largest country and, in an astonishingly short time, destroyed years of progress, making Russia once more a threat to its own people and to the world. Gessen describes how, with ruthless efficiency, Putin dismantled the country’s media, wrested control and wealth from the burgeoning business class, and decimated the fragile mechanisms of democracy. Virtually every obstacle to his unbridled control has been removed and every opposing voice silenced.