Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible - by Peter Pomerantsev (Paperback)

About the Book

"Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible is a journey into the glittering, surreal heart of 21st century Russia: into the lives of oligarchs convinced they are messiahs, professional killers with the souls of artists, Bohemian theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, supermodel sects, post-modern dictators, and playboy revolutionaries. This is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, where life is seen as a whirling, glamorous masquerade where identities can be switched and all values are changeable. It is a completely new type of society where nothing is true and everything is possible--yet it is also home to a new form of authoritarianism, built not on oppression but avarice and temptation. Peter Pomerantsev, ethnically Russian but raised in England, came to Moscow work in the fast-growing television and film industry. The job took him into every nook and corrupt cranny of the country: from meetings in smoky rooms with propaganda gurus through to distant mafia-towns in Siberia. As he becomes more successful in his career, he gets invited to the best parties, becomes friend to oligarchs and strippers alike, and grows increasingly uneasy as he is drawn into the mechanics of Putin's post-modern dictatorship. In Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, we meet Vitaliy, a Mafia boss proudly starring in a film about his own crimes; Zinaida, a Chechen prostitute who parties in Moscow while her sister is drawn towards becoming a Jihadi; and many more. These 21st century Russians grew up among Soviet propaganda they never believed in, became disillusioned with democracy after the fall of communism, and are now filled with a sense of cynicism and enlightenment. Pomerantsev captures the bling effervescence of oil-boom Russia, as well as the steadily deleterious effects of all this flash and cynicism on the country's social fabric. A long-nascent conflict is flaring up in Russia as a new generation of dissidents takes to the streets, determined to defy the Kremlin and fight for a society where beliefs and values actually count for something. The stories recounted in Nothing is True and Everything is Possible are wild and bizarre and lavishly entertaining, but they also reveal the strange and sober truth of a society's return from post-Soviet freedom to a new and more complex form of tyranny"--

Book Synopsis

A journey into the glittering, surreal heart of twenty-first-century Russia, where even dictatorship is a reality show.

"A gripping and unsettling account." --Washington Post

Professional killers with the souls of artists, would-be theater directors turned Kremlin puppet masters, Hells Angels who hallucinate themselves as holy warriors: welcome to twenty-first-century Russia. It is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality.

When British producer Peter Pomerantsev plunges into the booming Russian TV industry, he gains access to every nook and corrupt cranny of the country. He meets with propaganda gurus running the nerve center of the Russian media machine, explores Siberian mafia towns, and visits the salons of the international, super-rich oligarchs. As his experience takes him ever deeper into the maze of Putin's Russia, Pomerantsev begins to see the country with new eyes.

Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible is a piercingly insightful voyage into a country spinning from decadence into madness.

Review Quotes

Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Gordon Burn Prize

Winner of the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize

"No need to visit this theatrical dystopia of a country--Pomerantsev's book provides all the Russian adventure you'll need." --Wired

"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, New York Times bestselling author of The Diana Chronicles

"Captivating... keen observations." --The New York Times

"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, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Autocracy, Inc.

"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 Magazine

Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize

"Enthralling... His exquisite rendering of mind-control techniques is chilling." --Times Literary Supplement

"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 Review

"Sparkling... provides great insight into the inner life of Russia's glitterati." --Wall Street Journal

"A brilliant, entertaining, and ultimately tragic book about not only Russia, but the West." --Tablet Magazine

"A patchwork tapestry that leaves you shaking your head in disbelief." --The Guardian

"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

"A tale of descending into and eventually emerging from Moscow's hallucinogenic reality." --Foreign Affairs

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

"Hauntingly perceptive and beautifully written." --New Statesman (UK)

"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

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

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

About the Author

Peter Pomerantsev is a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of This Is Not Propaganda and How to Win an Information War. He writes for publications including Granta, The Atlantic, Financial Times, London Review of Books, and Politico, among others.