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AUTHOR
Pieter Waterdrinker
Pieter Waterdrinker (born 1961, Haarlem) is one of the most successful…
DiscoverPieter Waterdrinker at Wigtown Book Festival
As the war with Ukraine rumbles on, what does the ordinary Russian on the street think? Has the nation changed for ever? Or is the current situation a “blip” in international relations? What happened to the post-Glasnost hopes and what might a post-Putin future look like? Timothy Phillips and Pieter Waterdrinker bring their specialist knowledge of Russia to bear on these questions in this special event.
About the speakers
Timothy Phillips grew up in Northern Ireland. He holds a doctorate in Russian from Oxford University and has written extensively on Russian and British history. His previous books include Beslan, about the tragic events around the school shooting in North Ossetia in 2004, and The Secret Twenties, about Soviet spies in Britain in the years after the First World War.
Pieter Waterdrinker is a Dutch novelist, foreign correspondent, and the author of The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street: a Russian adventure who lived in St Petersburg with his Russian wife and three cats, until fleeing the country when Russia invaded Ukraine.
For more information and to book your ticket, please visit the event website here.
The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street
A Daily Express Book of the Year
‘Engrossing … grips you and doesn’t let go.’ The Spectator
‘Waterdrinker’s gift for savage comedy and his war correspondent’s eye have few contemporary equivalents.’ The Times
?A thrilling escapade through the Soviet Union of the ’90s and early 2000s by a tour guide turned smuggler turned novelist, that tells the unputdownable story of modern Russia.
One day, in 1988, a priest knocks on Pieter Waterdrinker’s door with an unusual request: will he smuggle seven thousand bibles into the Soviet Union? Pieter agrees, and soon finds himself living in the midst…
The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street
‘History doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes.’
One day in 1988, an enigmatic priest knocks on Pieter Waterdrinker’s door with an unusual request: will he smuggle seven thousand bibles into the Soviet Union? Pieter agrees, and soon finds himself living in the midst of one of the biggest social and cultural revolutions of our time, working as a tour operator ... with a sideline in contraband.
Thirty years later, from his apartment on Tchaikovsky Street in Saint Petersburg, where he lives with his Russian wife and three cats, Pieter reflects on his personal history in the Soviet Union, as well as the…
