France has always had a special relationship with Russia. From the days when the Marquis de Custine (1790–1857) arrived in St. Petersburg to discover that his Russian hosts were more comfortable speaking his language than that of their own peasants to the heady decades before World War I when France was the biggest investor in Russia’s industrialization, the two countries maintained strong ties even when other European nations kept the tsar’s autocracy at arm’s length.

Emmanuel Macron tried to uphold that tradition in the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Newspapers carried photographs of the French president looking haggard after long calls with Vladimir Putin trying unsuccessfully to broker a diplomatic settlement.

A year has passed, and once again France is playing the role of Russia’s European interpreter, this time via the very Gallic medium of fiction. The roman à clef La Mage du Kremlin has become the surprise hit of the Paris literary season, sweeping all the prizes save the Goncourt, where it controversially fell short by a single vote on the fourteenth round. French politicians including the prime minister cite it to explain their positions on the Ukraine war. The novel’s depiction of Putin’s inner circle is thought to provide unique insight into Russian thinking.

Who is the novelist Giuliano da Empoli, and what sort of book has he written? In the absence of an English translation (due to be published in the United States in October), TAC asked Christopher Caldwell to report on this politicoliterary phenomenon. It turns out that da Empoli is a practiced interpreter of populists for a cosmopolitan audience, having written books previously about Italy’s Five Star Movement and Steve Bannon—which is not to say that he has any populist sympathies himself. Caldwell concludes that the novel may well be a better guide to how to think about the Ukraine war than much of what passes for strategic analysis in Washington.

Bruce Gilley has accomplished a feat of imaginative sympathy and political daring comparable to da Empoli’s, putting himself in the shoes of a vilified bogeyman. Gilley’s villain is King Leopold of Belgium. Was his rule of the Congo as bad as it has been depicted? Most modern hatred of Leopold derives from the book King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild. Gilley reveals that Hochschild’s book is more propaganda than scholarship. From bad translations to misleading manipulation of statistics, Hochschild repeatedly bent the truth to support his left-wing conclusions.

Find Gilley’s comprehensive case against Hochschild in our Features section—and for another measured evaluation of empire, read Jude Russo’s review of Nigel Biggar’s new book Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning in the Arts & Letters section.

Six months living in Mexico did not quite turn Christopher Brunet into Colonel Kurtz, but certainly our correspondent was confronted with behaviors that his Canadian upbringing did not prepare him for. Those people who think that Mexico is the United States with more taco trucks will want to read his dispatch. It has important implications for America’s immigration policy.

Empires must contend with barbarians at home no less than abroad. A notable eruption of barbarism took place in 2020 with CHAZ, the so-called autonomous zone in Seattle ruled by anarchists and warlords. A teenager was murdered there, but no one has been held accountable for his death. A comprehensive look at the coverup has been undertaken by journalist Jonathan Ireland, which we are very happy to publish in this issue under the title “A Murder in CHAZ."