Owen Matthews

Owen Matthews (born 1971) is a British writer, historian and journalist. His first book, Stalin's Children, was shortlisted for the 2008 Guardian First Books Award,^[1] the Orwell Prize for political writing,^[2] and France's Prix Medicis Etranger.^[3] His books have been translated into 28 languages. He is a former Moscow and Istanbul Bureau Chief for Newsweek Magazine.

Biography[]

Owen Matthews was born in London in 1971. He was educated at Westminster School and studied Modern History at Christ Church, Oxford.^[4]

Journalism[]

During the Bosnian War, Matthews worked as a foreign correspondent in Budapest, Sarajevo and Belgrade.^[4][5] From 1995–7 he worked as a reporter on The Moscow Times. In 1997 he joined Newsweek Magazine's Moscow Bureau as a correspondent, covering the Second Chechen war. In 2001 he moved to Turkey, reporting from Turkey, the Caucasus, Syria and Iran, and also covering the invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq.^[4][6] From 2006 to 2012 he was Newsweek's Moscow Bureau Chief; he is now a Contributing Editor at the magazine.^[4] In 2014 he reported for Newsweek on the conflict in Eastern Ukraine.^[7]

Books[]

• Stalin's Children: Three Generations of Love and War (Bloomsbury, 2008), a memoir of three generations of Matthews' family in Russia, was named as a Book of the Year by The Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph.^[8][9]
• Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of Russian America (Bloomsbury 2013), a history of Imperial Russia's doomed attempt to colonise America, was shortlisted for the 2014 Pushkin House Prize^[10] for books on Russia.^{[11][12][13][14]}
• Moscou Babylone (Les Escales, 2013), a novel based on Matthews' experiences in Moscow in the 1990s, has been published in French,^[15] German^[16] and Czech. It was chosen as the 'coup de coeur etranger' (favourite foreign book) at the 2013 Nancy Literary Festival, Le Livre sur la Place.^[17]
• Thinking with the Blood (Newsweek, 2014), a personal reportage based on a journey across war-torn Ukraine in the late summer of 2014, was published as an ebook.^[18]
• L'Ombre du Sabre (Les Escales, 2016) A novel inspired by the author's own experiences as a reporter in Chechnya in the 1990s and in Eastern Ukraine in 2014 ^[19]
• An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin's Master Agent (Bloomsbury, 2019)^[20] A biography of German Communist spy Richard Sorge, the first English language work written with extensive access to the Soviet archives. Chosen as a Book of the Year by The Economist magazine: "A tragic, heroic story, magnificently told with an understated rage."^[21]
• Black Sun (Doubleday, 2019), Based on real events—the bid by Andrei Sakharov to develop a bomb to end all bombs—this story is set in a secret Soviet city in 1961. Featuring murder and betrayals, and a flawed but principled KGB man as its hero, it unfolds in the aftermath of Stalinism, amid the scars left by the purges, denunciations and Great Patriotic War. Chosen as a Book of the Year by The Economist ^[22] (making Matthews the first ever author to have two books on the Economist list in the same year); a Crime Book of the Month in The Sunday Times;^[23] and one of the Financial Times' Best Thrillers of 2019.^[24]

Art[]

In 2013 Matthews had his first solo art show, "Impact" at the Galerie Nivet Carzon in Paris.^[25] The installation centred on an impacted 9mm pistol round which Matthews picked up from a pavement in Baghdad, Iraq, next to the body of a man whom it had killed.

Television[]

Matthews co-wrote the 2015 Russian television series Londongrad and played an episodic role in it.^[26] Matthews also played the US Ambassador to Moscow in the 2017 Russian television series The Optimists.^[27]

From 2016-18 Matthews appeared regularly as a guest on Russian political talk shows 60 Minut (Russia's top-rated talk show on Rossiya 1); NTV's Mesto Vstrechi and Rossiya 1's Evening with Vladimir Solovyev.^[28] He was known for outspoken criticism of the Kremlin and his clashes with senior Russian politicians, including Vladimir Zhirinovsky.^{[29] [30]}

References[]

External links[]

• Newsweek Magazine author page [1]
• Spectator Magazine author page [2]
• Pushkin House Prize author interview [3]
• Guardian First Books Award author interview [4]
• Nancy Literary Festival author interview [5]
• Huffington Post author interview [6]
• Profile on TNT [7]