John Kampfner's Top Book Recommendations

John KampfnerThis is an extremely evocative book. Chimamanda, a young Nigerian author who has spent some time in America and some time in England, did a previous novel on the Biafran war. But this is a beautiful set of short stories on what it is like for young immigrants to experience democracy, warts and all, for the first time, and to negotiate these new freedoms. It’s a very personalised journey through... (Source)

John KampfnerThe last two books are about America. The Anthony Lewis book is a history of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which is a subject of endless fascination with me. At Index on Censorship we have been fighting hard for freedom of speech and freedom of the press since the autumn, when we published our proposals for changing English libel law to stop libel tourists using the courts here.... (Source)

John KampfnerLilia Shevtsova is fascinating on this. She is a great democrat, who works for the Carnegie Endowment, which exists quite happily in Russia. She traces the reasons behind Yeltsin-style pseudo-democracy and the rise of Putin-style authoritarianism. A lot of it can be attributed to the second election in 1996, which Yeltsin effectively gerrymandered and bought the election. Some of the great TV... (Source)

John KampfnerYes, that is the fascinating angle of this account by Timothy Colton. He had amazing access as a journalist and academic to Yeltsin and his entourage, his daughter and his daughter’s husband. In the years before Yeltsin stood down, they ran the Kremlin like this tsarist fiefdom. I lived in Russia from 1990 to 1994 and I was there during the most exciting parts of the collapse of communism and the... (Source)

John KampfnerIt is a matter of endless fascination for Indians and for Chinese and for others like myself to ask the great Chindia question: to what extent are these two countries similar and to what extent are they very different? Aiyar is a young Indian foreign correspondent based in Beijing. For me, it was fascinating to get a perspective on China from a non-Anglo Saxon and non-European perspective, yet... (Source)