{"product_id":"moscow-moscow-by-christopher-hope","title":"'Moscow! Moscow!' by Christopher Hope","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"232\" data-end=\"741\"\u003eChristopher Hope’s \u003cem data-start=\"251\" data-end=\"268\"\u003eMoscow! Moscow!\u003c\/em\u003e is a satirical, essayistic wander through late Soviet Moscow, written at the edge of a political world beginning to crack open.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"232\" data-end=\"741\"\u003eHope moves through Gorbachev-era Russia with the eye of a novelist rather than a straight historian: alert to bureaucracy, absurdity, public performance, state language, queues, myths, monuments, suspicion, jokes, fear, masculinity and many, many ghosts.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"743\" data-end=\"1310\"\u003eIt is partly reportage, partly travel book, partly political comedy, and partly an outsider’s encounter with a city whose surfaces are never only surfaces. Hope is especially good on the grotesque and ceremonial habits of power: the official phrase, the controlled gesture, the rules everyone knows how to bend, the civic rituals that persist even when belief has gone slack. A good one for readers of Eastern European\/Russian political writing, Cold War afterlives, literary travel, Soviet collapse, satire, and books where history appears as both farce and weather.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1312\" data-end=\"1658\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eMinerva paperback edition, published in 1990. First published in Great Britain by William Heinemann in 1990. Good second-hand condition with visible shelfwear, rubbing, edgewear, page toning, and handling to the cover. A readable copy with very strong period cover design.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45685624569939,"sku":null,"price":16.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/thebowerbooker_62.png?v=1781086630","url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/products\/moscow-moscow-by-christopher-hope","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}