Nikolai Tolstoy
The Name’s Oggins
The Lost Spy: An American in Stalin’s Secret Service
By Andrew Meier
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 403pp £20
This is a remarkable book, painstakingly researched. Intriguingly, it amounts effectively to a book within a book. So exhaustive have the author’s researches been that it seems unlikely that there is anything left to discover about its protagonist, save some withheld material lodged in FSB (formerly KGB) files in Moscow. A thin strain of biographical information lies buried within a vast and discursive congeries of ancillary information, relevant and (all too often) otherwise.
Cy (for Ysai) Oggins was born in 1898 to immigrant Russian Jewish parents in the provincial town of Willimantic, New England. His parents’ industry established them as a securely middle-class family, respected in the community. Cy proved himself sufficiently academically talented to enrol at Columbia University, where he
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
When @djbduncan notices the text for a literary jigsaw puzzle had been written by a former colleague, his head spins. A wild surmise. Are jigsaws REF-able?
Dennis Duncan - The W Factor
Dennis Duncan: The W Factor
literaryreview.co.uk
In an effort to scold drinkers, Victorian temperance societies furiously marked every drinking establishment with a red X on city maps. It was a spectacular case of propaganda backfiring.
@foxtosser explores the history of drink maps
Edward Brooke-Hitching - From Beer Street to Gin Lane
Edward Brooke-Hitching: From Beer Street to Gin Lane - Drink Maps in Victorian Britain by Kris Butler
literaryreview.co.uk
How did a workers’ insurance agent who died of tuberculosis at the age of forty become a global literary icon?
@MortenHoiJensen on Kafka's metamorphosis
Morten Høi Jensen - Paranoid Humanoid
Morten Høi Jensen: Paranoid Humanoid - Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka by Karolina Watroba; Kafka: Making o...
literaryreview.co.uk