The author who went inside Putin’s mind — and wrote a bestseller
An Italian politico has made the Russian leader a character in his provocative novel. Is his portrayal too sympathetic, asks Peter Conradi
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Giuliano da Empoli was as shocked as anyone else by Vladimir Putin’s disregard for international law and human life.
The Paris-based political scientist and former adviser to Matteo Renzi, when he was Italian prime minister, also had a particular personal reason to be dismayed: he had just sent Gallimard, his French publisher, the final version of his first novel, The Wizard of the Kremlin, which was based on Putin’s relationship with one of his closest aides. He feared it might sink without trace amid the barrage of newspaper articles, television reports and non-fiction books about the conflict. “I thought it would be drowned and crushed by reality,” he says.
Da Empoli’s pessimism proved misplaced — to put it
