Young Stalin

By: Simon Sebag Montefiore

Narrated by: Sean Barrett

Winner of the Costa Biography Award, 2007.

Young Stalin is a remarkable adventure story about an exceptional, turbulent young man, born in exoticism, raised in the church, fancying himself a poet, then embracing revolutionary idealism and thereby finding his romantic, Messianic mission in life.

All the roots of Stalin the Great Dictator can be traced to his youth - not merely his psychology, but his hatreds, his loves, his intellectual interests, his gangsterish murderousness, his friendships, his knowledge of the world. Above all, in the underground Bolshevik life are the seeds that grew into the paranoia and Terror of the Soviet imperium. Young Stalin is the product of major new research.

This book is the prequel to the international best-selling biography Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar.

©2007 Simon Sebag Montefiore; (P)2006 Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Get inside Stalin's head with this story

If you could sum up Young Stalin in three words, what would they be?

Mesmerising, engrossing and thrilling

What did you like best about this story?

The degree of details available though Stalin's personal letters and/or the records from close associates and the police and secret service.

Have you listened to any of Sean Barrett’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No. Not bad got to like his voice eventually.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

What made Stalin the murderer he became

Any additional comments?

An essential novel for anyone interested in the what and why of the Soviet system. A book that must be listen to before the other book of Simon Sebag Monetfiore, the Court of the Red Czar - also an excellent book.

long and very detailed

it's easy to get lost in the detail with so many characters. he's a complex man and it's an interesting story

Informative

Very informative