Limonov: The Outrageous Adventures of the Radical Soviet Poet Who Became a Bum in New York, a Sensation in France, and a Political Antihero in Russia Paperback – October 6, 2015

This book is a real gem. It tells the breathtaking story of the Russian writer and politician Limonov who has experienced great despair and poverty as well as fame and success. In doing so, it is uniquely combining biographic and historic account with captivating story telling and life philosophy:Through following Limonov's life you will be able to not only understand but really feel the history of the Soviet Union, transition to modern Russia, and current politics as put into action by Putin.In his never-ending search to become a "true hero" Limonov turns into a real-life version of Siddartha Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse's famous account on the enlightenment of a fellow traveller of Buddha). This book will make you think about how to live your life.

Help non Russian to understand de complexities of the former USSR. Pictures a unique character of a genuine anarquist/stalinist/freedon fighter/poet/survivor

An utterly captivating account of a Russian outsider determined to leave his mark on the world. The real-life Eduard Limonov does a lot of reprehensible things in this novelized biography (too many to list here), but you can't help but stay with him on his journey from Soviet dissident poet to homeless New York exile to Russian nationalist and political prisoner. This book succeeds on so many levels as Emmanuel Carrère guides us with great lucidity through seven decades of truly messed up Russian history.

Carrere is a fantastic weaver of tales and he and his translator John Lambert have pulled off a ripping yarn. One of Carrere’s virtues as a writer of semi-non-fiction is is ability to get close to his subjects without judging them. The problem here of course is that Limonov is a grimy misogynist and at a certain point - page 46 for me - you may wonder why his is company you want to keep. And it isn’t, but darned if Carrere isn’t also able to tell a compelling story about Russia from the 50s to today and that was what kept me from throwing this book across the room.

A great read! One of those rare books that, as it tells the main story, also explains how a part of the world works. Reads like a novel. One of the best books I've read in a while.

This French author increasingly blurs his own life with his subjects. Retelling tales, he regales us with his own encounters with the character(s). My Life as a Russian Novel signalled this shift in 2007. The Kingdom examined Jesus by way of Luke and Paul as well as his earlier, Catholic-convert period, in 2017. In between, this take on a punk-raconteur-politician-mercenary-hustler, Eduard Limonov, appeared. I'm not as taken by him as is Carrère--even if he confesses late on that over four years working on this depiction, he "hated" him at least now and then. This book goes on too long, like the others I've read by Carrère. Still, it has moments of verve and insights lacking in many biographies.Early on, Carrère asks of his subject: "is it the romance of the terrorist cell or the resistance network?" The elusive nature of Limonov, although he's a bit more appealing in looks apparently than, say, Zelig, haunts this account. "It was as if I came to interview Michel Houllebecq, Lou Reed, and Daniel Cohn-Bendit all at the same time." Once he was "a prisoner in a forced-labor camp on the Volga, and" later "as a trendy writer surrounded by Philippe Starck interiors." His transformations rival David Bowie. You also find out about the common source of origin for Carrère and Limonov, Russia and formerly the USSR. Its own Soviet rise and fall serves as the backdrop, but not as oppressive a one as Westerners suppose. In L's view, the dissidents hyped their suffering, and sold the image of the CCCP as a giant gulag, when for many, such as his family, it was not that bad, and it provided a decent if not lavish support system lacking in the capitalist frenzy of the "crisis economy."Such revisionism also colors the "nazbol" affiliation L. champions. Despite Carrère's explanations, this aspect to me appeared less clear, and it seemed that L. was (like Bowie or Reed) striking a street tough pose to blend into a rough trade crowd. Still, as Carrère defends L., he does have his moments. "And I think a lot of self-proclaimed humanists with nothing but kindness and compassion on their lips are in fact more selfish and more indifferent than Eduard, who has spent his whole life casting himself in the role of the villain." Like his chronicler, L. publishes his own life, and also intermingled with those he studies, lives among, or shares their stories. "To become known, a writer has, by and large, a choice between inventing stories, telling true ones, and giving his opinion about the world as it is." Both writers appear to mix these three genres. The lesson Carrère finds in the defiant role L. takes on is repeated in The Kingdom: a Buddhist sutra's admonition that "a man who judges himself superior, inferior, or even equal to another does not understand reality." L. even reaches "satori" here.We also learn of the chilling demands made in the sort of totalitarian state that such as L. appear to evoke nostalgically, for occluded purposes. Meanwhile, Carrère provides a necessary reminder. "The Soviet authorities accorded themselves the privilege that Saint Thomas Aquinas denied to God, that is, to make what has happened not have happened, and it's not to George Orwell but to Lenin's companion Pyatokov that we owe this extraordinary sentence: 'For the party's sake you can and must at twenty-four hour's notice change all your convictions and force yourself to believe that white is black.'" Carrère adds that the USSR pushed this more than the Reich, for the state not only told people "they see black when they see white," but obliged "them to not only repeat it but really to believe it in the long run." And, as Solzhenitsyn predicted, "as soon as people start telling the truth, the whole edifice will collapse." L. had some part in meddling in an attempted coup of what replaced the CCCP,. but this episode is muddled in this relation despite or due to the facts piled up by Carrère.Criminals ran that regime, but how L. fought to keep its successor from falling into the same cabal is unclear. As Carrère notes if rarely, sometimes he may not be able to trust his informant. However, L. makes a telling rejoinder. "When unsavory characters like Limonov and his kin say that our faith in human rights and democracy is the modern equivalent of Catholic colonialism--the same good intentions, the same absolute certitude in bringing truth, goodness, and beauty to the savages--I may not be pleased by this relativist argument, but I've got nothing solid to counter it with," he confesses.For L. and his mates "prefer the truth as it is to the truth they would like it to be," unlike many liberals, by supposition. And, as noted above, L. takes up meditation and rather rapidly achieves what a fellow adept, Carrère, is amazed by. L. gets a glimpse beyond. "Gone is the desire, the anxiety that are at the basis of human life. They'll return, of course, because unless you're one of the illuminated--and according to the Hindus there's only one every century--you can't remain in this state. But you've had a taste of what life is like without them, you know firsthand what it means to be in the clear."In a 2009 Moscow epilogue, set deep in the Putin era, Carrère returns to Moscow. His eulogy for what was once is rare among Western writers; I reckon Carrère's frequent visits to his grandfather's homeland and his own fluency in at least some Russian temper the reactions made by less-informed journalists and pundits about a strange specter still haunting today's tycoons and their downtrodden, once more, fellow Russians. "Communism was something grand, heroic, beautiful, something that was confident and that bestowed confidence. It had an innocence to it, and, in the merciless world that succeeded it, everyone confusedly associates it with their childhood and with the kinds of things that make you cry when childhood memories come back to you in a flash." As illustrated in this passage, translator John Lambert, a frequent colleague of Carrère in this endeavor, renders this well.I found the backdrop to L.'s machinations and manipulations more compelling than that actor himself. How one survives the collapse of a world-building ideology, and how one lives among a world outside one's disintegrating homeland, only to return to that place to be jailed, freed, and lauded, has great potential. This picaresque narrative wears out its welcome, but in certain moments, it's gripping.

To be totally honest I haven't read all of this yet. I'm just excited that Amazon actually had it. This is the only book about Liminov I've been able to find in English anywhere. Read it and find out about one of the most strange and interesting people you've never heard of!

Disturbing yet compelling.