Pieter Waterdrinker (18:15)

Given Russia’s current expansionist posturing, we would be well to give Waterdrinker audience - The Times

The Long Song of Tchaikovsky Street is Pieter Waterdrinker’s memoir of the collapse of the Soviet Union based on the author’s own experience of living and immersing himself in the country, and of how revolution has left its mark on his adopted St Petersburg.

It begins in the Netherlands one day in 1988, when an enigmatic priest knocks on his door with an unusual request: will he smuggle 7000 bibles into the Soviet Union? Waterdrinker agrees, to find himself in the midst of one of the biggest social and cultural upheavals of our time, working as a tour operator - with a sideline in contraband.

A long-time Moscow correspondent at the leading Dutch daily De Telegraaf, and one of the most successful Dutch novelists writing today, he blends history with memoir to create an ode to the divided soul of Russia at a critical moment.

Translator Paul Evans
Part of New Dutch Writing, presented by the Dutch Foundation for Literature

In conversation with Anna Somers Cocks

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