Dressed Up for a Riot

Misadventures in Putin's Moscow

By: Michael Idov

Narrated by: Michael Idov

In this crackling memoir, the journalist and novelist Michael Idov recounts the tempestuous years he spent living alongside - and closely observing - the media and cultural elite of Putin's Russia.

After accepting a surprise offer to become the editor in chief of GQ Russia, Idov and his family arrive in a Moscow still seething from a dubious election and the mass anti-Putin rallies that erupted in response. Idov is fascinated by the political turmoil but nonetheless finds himself pulled in unlikely directions. He becomes a tabloid celebrity, acts in a Russian movie with Snoop Dogg, befriends the members of Pussy Riot, punches an anti-Semitic magazine editor on the steps of the Bolshoi Theatre, sells an autobiographical sitcom pilot that is later changed into an anti-American farce, and writes Russia's top-grossing domestic movie of 2015.

Meanwhile, he becomes disillusioned with the splintering opposition to Putin and is briefly attracted to a kind of jaded Putinism lite - until Russia's invasion of Ukraine thoroughly changes his mind.

©2018 Michael Idov (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Only if you are deep into Russian pop culture

Book is just a whole lot of name dropping of Russian pop culture. Story goes nowhere, just one party after another telling us one Russian name after another. Narrator speaks low and monotone with a Russian accent - do not listen to while driving - he will put you to sleep!