Books like Limonov

Wild ride memoir of a figure who can’t be pinned down. This is the most effaced I’ve seen Carrere the narrator (even in the superior THE ADVERSARY, I feel his presence. His main intervention is with the one central question that keeps recurring: Are we following a vile sociopath, or a brilliant chameleon? Limonov is at once racist, facist, and gay icon, Buddhist writer and jingoistic combatant. I am sure that he is a less rollicking figure than the cover text would have you think.I was disturbed by this book – there is an early scene of graphic sexual assault that almost made me drop it – but the life is fascinating: from a nowhere Soviet city to the tail-end of literary Moscow to down and out as a New York hustler to a wealthy housekeeper to a famous writer to a Yugoslavian combatant to a dissident publisher to a spiritual prisoner to an anti-Putin rallyer to a facist, Limonov is a real-life Zelig and an interesting case-study.Carrere has incredible access, and with his usual knack for stitching disparate elements together into a sort of cohesion, I zoomed through despite my concerns. While this is nowhere near his masterpiece, THE KINGDOM, I learned a great deal about the last days of the Soviet Union. Limonov is an imperfect conduit for Carrere’s talents, but the book has stuck with me in the weeks since I’ve read it, in the weeks I struggled to even write these three short paragraphs.