‘[Masha Gessen’s] knowledge of Soviet and Russian history, and her reporting on the ground in Dagestan, Kyrgyzstan and Chechnya, lend a resonance and weight to the sections of this book devoted to the Tsarnaev family’s peregrinations in that region before deciding to immigrate to the United States … The portrait of the Tsarnaevs that emerges from this book, like many accounts, is that of a restless, fractious family that would find its immigrant dreams dissolving, after a decade, into disappointment and dysfunction; a family whose personal woes and confusions seem to have played as large a role, or even a larger one, in paving the brothers’ road to violence than any sort of coherent, informed ideology or religious commitment.’
Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
‘A balanced account of an event as shattering as the Boston Marathon bombing will by its nature be controversial … Gessen has done valuable work … She is to be commended for humanizing rather than demonizing the brothers … [The Tsarnaev Brothers] offers another point of view.’
Newsday
‘The fearless Russian-American journalist brings equal parts sympathy and skepticism to the task of tracking the Tsarnaev family … You don't have to believe all of Gessen’s conclusions to find the journey both fascinating and illuminating on the hardships of life on the cultural margins.’
Vulture
‘Engrossing … one of the best books I’ve ever read about terrorism and the immigrant experience in America … [Gessen] is a student of state and stateless terror, and is excellent on the varieties of fear it engenders.’
Newsweek
‘Gessen finds no single point in the brothers’ lives at which they were radicalized. Instead, she presents twists and turns that offer vantage points where we can pause and ask, What if?’
Janet Napolitano, New York Times Book Review
‘Meticulous … Gessen traces the [Tsarnaev] family’s experience as ethnic Chechen refugees and immigrants to before the now infamous brothers were even born to better understand all of the factors that led to the Boston bombing.’
Cullen Murphy, Vanity Fair
‘The gut-wrenching clarity of Gessen’s account is a gift. Her prose is spare and highly polished, evoking the melancholy of the Tsarnaevs’s homeland … This is not aloof, dispassionate journalism. Gessen’s voice runs through it, quietly assured in its judgments … If the brothers remain an enigma, what is illuminated is their world — Gessen demonstrates the fragmentation within communities when fear and suspicion take root, and she shows how tactics used to fight terrorism risk degrading the ideals we aim to protect, sowing bitter disillusionment in people whose American dreams turn into nightmares … It’s impossible not to read on. [Gessen’s] tenacious reporting commands our attention and makes The Brothers essential to understanding how the heartbreak here in Boston fits into the endless heartache of this world.’
Jenna Russell, Boston Globe
‘Extraordinary … Both a gripping narrative and a stunning piece of investigative journalism … Gessen gives us the human side to the story of two young men who must be understood as more than monsters, and she persuasively argues that we deserve more answers than we've gotten.’
Randy Dotinga, Christian Science Monitor
‘Meticulously documented and detailed … [Gessen] crafts a dark tapestry, woven of war and loss in Chechnya, Dagestan and the Tsarnaev's own brutal history.’
Providence Journal
‘Gessen rejects the usual narrative of religious ‘‘radicalisation’’ … her argument is that no single route led Tamerlan and Dzhokhar to their abominable deeds … the Boston bombings resulted from a tangled web of frustrations and unhappinesses, in which the personal, the political and the religious were inextricably entwined.’
Jeff Sparrow, Saturday Age
‘This tale of immigrant ambition gone wrong is well told by the Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen … The backstory of family dysfunction and dislocation stretching back to Stalin makes this an important work on the psychology of sectarian violence.’
Roger Atwood, Times Literary Supplement
‘[Uses] the brothers’ story as a prism through which to shed light on issues and phenomena besides the two young men and their actions … It is refreshing to see Gessen applying to US procedures and pathologies the same withering glare she has long applied to Russia’s’
Matthew Clayfield, Weekend Australian
‘Gessen patiently pulls apart the “radicalisation narrative” that dominates the popular understanding of terrorism … Compellingly told and richly researched … [Gessen has] courage and integrity.’
Duncan White, Daily Telegraph
‘[O]ne of the most thought provoking books I have read for a long time … superbly researched … In Gessen’s words: “It is where the small story of the Tsarnaevs joins the large story of the war against terror.”’
Margaret Reilly, Northern Advocate
‘Penetrating and compelling.’
Molly McCloskey, Irish Times
‘Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen examines how a dislocated family produced two self-radicalised terrorists in Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev … [Gessen] discovers their restlessness both in their homeland and during their 10-year American sojourn, untangles relationships and personalities, and explores how their American dream became so soured.’
Dale Williams, Listener
‘[Masha Gessen] is ideally placed to take on the story behind the Boston marathon bombers. And she is the perfect person to situate it in the wider context of “the war on terror” in a way that illuminates and inspires. This is quite simply a remarkable piece of old-school journalism … Gessen does not look for excuses or blame, but she seeks — relentlessly, good-humouredly and with all the insight she brings as a Russian raised in the US — to explain … An utterly gripping book, both challenging and illuminating.’
Viv Groskop, Spectator
‘Provocative … A classic tale of immigrant wandering that ends ultimately in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the implosion of the American dream into bloody violence.’
Prospect
‘The Tsarnaev Brothers is an immersive, forensic attempt to dissect the metamorphosis of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar from disaffected, unremarkable young men into improbable terrorists.’
Sunday Business Post
‘A superlative work of reporting that locates the Boston atrocity and the Tsarnaevs in the queasy context of the modern world, where atrocities happen every day, in places presumed to be ‘safe’ as well as those beset by civil war … An extraordinary book.’
Gary Indiana, LRB
‘This book throws up a lot of important questions, and some answers, while making it clear that the full facts of the case have yet to be revealed … an important antidote to the breathless 24/7 news coverage that recycles rumour as fact.’
Anthony Smith, NZ International review
‘[The Tsarnaev Brothers] doesn't offer easy answers, but it gives context to a grotesque act of violence.’
Time Australia 'Best Books of 2015'
