Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist, author, and activist who has been an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin. Gessen is a Moscow native who understands the culture and psychology of Russia. Her family left Russia when she was a teenager, but she returned for a 10-year stay as an independent journalist. In The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, Gessen's analysis of Putin is mostly speculative, but she carefully investigates his own revealing accounts of his life, and she uses interviews with people who knew Putin, before he rose to power, to form her conclusions. Gessen's epilogue is a worthy conclusion to a book that is a part-personal memoir, part-political and social history and part-polemic, but whose distinction lies in the strength of her own voice and those of her contemporaries. In relying on their testimony, and her own sensibilities, Gessen conveys the atmosphere - whether of the last months of the Soviet Union, the chaotic years of Yeltsin, the strange transfer of the presidency to Putin or the disappointments of his period - more accurately than any recent chronicler of the period. There were multiple reviews for the book, even the CIA reviewed it. Along with positive reviews came mixed ones. Many had said Masha had a biased view or there had been books about Putin that had been written better. Enjoy free online English audiobook “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin”, a breathtaking novel by Masha Gessen.
