In the Footsteps of Stalin’s Writers

Engineers Of The Soul

A brilliant fusion of travel writing and Soviet history which reads like Bruce Chatwin.

A compelling combination of literary criticism and travelogue

Westerman is a very fine writer and his stories, characters and digressions are as delicately wrought as a watch mechanism. Like Bruce Chatwin and the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, he has elevated the authorial journalist-traveller into a brilliant, magic storyteller; like them he seeks out the smaller, human-sized epics that play out their tragedies against the backdrop of history

Westerman completes a portrait at once engaging and devastating. As such, it comes closer than any conventional literary history to defining the elusive Socialist Realism.

An extraordinarily compelling, imaginative and subtle mixture of history, literary criticism and travelogue

The fate of Soviet writers under Stalin is movingly explored in this outstanding mix of travel book and literary study, which has about it more than a hint of Bruce Chatwin

Westerman merges investigative journalism, literary history and travel writing as he journeys across modern Russia to look at the legacy of literature under the Soviet Union... intriguing

As he travels around the former-USSR talking to ordinary Russians and visiting landmarks of the Soviet era, Dutch author and journalist Frank Westerman tells the story of authors like Pasternak and Gorky, the latter considered so important to the cause, Stalin launched an undercover operation to bring him back to Russia

Winding his way along numerous interconnected lines of inquiry, Westerman engages the reader with ease in the surprise and satisfactions of his fascinating, often tragic, discoveries about broken human lives, forgotten books and films, a nd places the desert has reclaimed

Highly recommended...to wrestle travelogue, literary biography, social history and bad communist cinema into such a readable tale is a triumph

While western studies have tended to focus on books that were clandestine, banned, confiscated or smuggled out of the USSR, Westerman... is more interested in the works of converts, hangers-on, backsliders and doubters. Who'd have thought a literary history of hydraulics would be so readable?

Frank Westerman was born in 1964 and lived and worked in Moscow from 1997 to 2002 as correspondent for the leading Dutch NRC Handelsblad newspaper. Westerman is the author of five highly praised books. His work has been published in more than ten languages and has won many prizes.

Engineers of the Soul draws the reader into the wild euphoria of the Russian Revolution, as art and reality are bent to radically new purposes. Writers of renown, described by Stalin as 'engineers of the soul', were encouraged to sing the praises of construction. But the initial enthusiasm of Soviet writers faltered as these colossal structures led to slavery and destruction, and they were obliged to labour on in the service of a deluded totalitarian society. 
 
Frank Westerman sweeps the reader along to the dramatic final confrontation between writers and engineers that signalled the end of the Soviet empire.

In Search of the Mythical Mountain

Ararat

A brilliant fusion of travel writing with writing about science and religious scepticism.

Thought-provoking and beautifully written... the book is much more than a travelogue... Sam Garrett's excellent translation highlights both Westerman's skilful pacing and love of language... Westerman has achieved his aim - to climb the mountain - and has found, too, an answer of sorts to the question of how science and religion can coexist

A entertaining mix of memoir, meditation, history and travel

What separates Ararat from the hundreds of other books that have taken on this subject in the past few years is the poetic, novelistic logic behind the author's search... It is Westerman's calm intelligence and freshness of perspective that make his book so appealing

In this beguiling, digressive mix of travelogue, memoir, history and gentle philosophising, [Westerman] probes at the roots of his own sceptical fascination with the mountain...consistently fascinating and elegantly written

A book of stupendous richness and complexity... written with enough knowledge, craft and competence to keep the drowsiest of readers wide awake from first to last

Westerman proves a perceptive, passionate writer, with a line in memorable observations... He also pens excellent discursive sections

An episodic, discursive book... The book is studded with information, skilfully constructed and fluently written.  The translation from the Dutch, by Sam Garrett, is relaxed and colloquial

Westerman's personal voyage of understanding - philosophical, rational and spiritual - as he tries to reconcile the clarity of science with the gravity pull of faith is a humane one

Besides surmounting Ararat, the feat achieved by Westerman is aligning his style with the nature of religion

An ambitious and attractive book. Its tone is learned, thoughtful and usually intimate...a finely balanced and well-told experiment that will echo with many readers

Mount Ararat in Turkey is where, as biblical tradition has it, Noah's Ark ran aground and God made his covenant with mankind. Now it stands astride the fault-line between religion and science, a geographical, political and cultural crossroads, bound up with the centuries-old history of warfare between different cultures in this region. Frank Westerman takes a pilgrimage from the mountain's foot to its highest slopes, meeting along the way geologists, priests and an expedition in search of the Ark's remains, as well as a Russian astronaut who observes that 'there is something between heaven and earth about which we humans know nothing'. 
 
Ararat is a dazzling, highly personal book about science, religion and all that lies between, by one of Europe's most celebrated young writers.

Frank Westerman

Sam Garrett

"When you touch a Lipizzaner, you’re touching history,” Westerman was once told. His elegant book offers fascinating proof

Westerman's own unique process of hybridisation, his mix of travel writing and history, yet again proves a winner… enquiring and thoughtful

Westerman’s account of the Lipizzaners’ remarkable survival makes stirring reading. His tales of research in secret archives and encounters with wartime veterans who helped with Operation Cowboy have the subterfuge and tension of a thriller

Westerman offers a reflective account of man’s obsession with the prized Lipizzaner horse

Westerman’s tale, part historical journey, part travel tome, takes the reader across Europe to explore every avenue of the Lipizzaner’s eclectic history

Man and beast in an age of human warfare

' "When you touch a Lipizzaner, you're touching history," Westerman was once told. His elegant book offers fascinating proof' Financial Times 
 
Frank Westerman explores the history of Lipizzaners, an extraordinary troop of pedigree horses bred as personal mounts for the Emperor of Austria-Hungary. Following the bloodlines of the stud book, he reconstructs the story of four generations of imperial steed as they survive the fall of the Habsburg Empire, two world wars and the insane breeding experiments conducted under Hitler, Stalin and Ceausescu. 
 
But what begins as a fairytale becomes a chronicle of the quest for racial purity. Carrying the reader across Europe, from imperial stables and stud farms to the controversial gene labs of today, Westerman asks, if animal breeders are so good at genetic engineering, why do attempts to perfect the human strain always end in tragedy?

Frank Westerman

Praise for Brother Mendel's Perfect Horse

"When you touch a Lipizzaner, you’re touching history,” Westerman was once told. His elegant book offers fascinating proof

Westerman's own unique process of hybridisation, his mix of travel writing and history, yet again proves a winner… enquiring and thoughtful

A masterpiece

"When you touch a Lipizzaner, you’re touching history,” Westerman was once told. His elegant book offers fascinating proof

Westerman's own unique process of hybridisation, his mix of travel writing and history, yet again proves a winner… enquiring and thoughtful

A masterpiece

"When you touch a Lipizzaner, you’re touching history,” Westerman was once told. His elegant book offers fascinating proof

Westerman's own unique process of hybridisation, his mix of travel writing and history, yet again proves a winner… enquiring and thoughtful

A masterpiece

Books by Frank Westerman

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter