Moscow Underground

‘A gripping thriller and Belkin is a character many readers will want to encounter again’

The Times

‘Gripping, moving and fascinating. A heartbreaking and passionate novel of the cruelty and fragility of love, death and life in Stalinist Russia by a great storyteller who also happens to be an outstanding historian. I loved it’ Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of the Moscow Trilogy

‘Both a brilliant thriller and a historical record of the ambition, terror and deviousness of that black era in Russian history’ Gareth Rubin, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Turnglass

‘Catherine Merridale brings to her thriller about a Moscow ripped up by builders and Stalinism not only the requisite skills of a thriller writer, but an exceptional credibility, as a historian with unparalleled knowledge of the times and the city’ Donald Rayfield, Emeritus Professor of Russian and Georgian, Queen Mary University of London

‘Moscow´s subway system was built to transform an old imperial capital into a modern Soviet metropolis but digging deep in the very heart of an empire can unleash the fates. Moscow Underground excavates the very foundation of the Russian state, a daring journey to the origins of Stalinism, all the more timely because in contemporary Russia the figure of Stalin is making an ominous comeback’ Sergei Lebedev, author of The Lady of The Mine

‘An enlightening historical thriller that brings Stalin’s USSR vividly to life’ Charlie English, author of The CIA Book Club

Catherine Merridale is an award-winning writer and broadcaster with an internationally acknowledged expertise in Russia and the former Soviet Union. A pioneer of oral history in the region, her first major book, Night of Stone, won the Royal Society of Literature’s Heinemann Prize and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize in 2001. More recently, Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia’s History won both the Wolfson History Prize and the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize in 2014. Ivan’s War tells the stories of ordinary Red Army soldiers in Europe’s last great land-based war, while Lenin on the Train tracks Europe’s collective and bungling responsibility for the Great October Revolution.