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] Hw was known for outspoken criticism of the Kremlin and his clashes with senior Russian politicians, including Vladimir Zhironovsky.[29] [30]

References
  1. "Guardian First Book award". The Guardian.
  2. http://theorwellprize.co.uk/shortlists/owen-matthews/
  3. "Prix Médicis 2009". alalettre.com.
  4. "Owen Matthews". Bloomsbury. Retrieved 5 June 2015.
  5. "Dining With the Author: Dangerous Misadventures With Owen Matthews". HuffPost. 28 April 2014. Retrieved 5 June 2015.
  6. "Owen Matthews". Journalisted. Retrieved 5 June 2015.
  7. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24008245-thinking-with-the-blood
  8. Simon Callow. "Review: Stalin's Children by Owen Matthews". The Guardian.
  9. "Edward Lucas: Owen Matthews "Stalin's Children" review". blogspot.com.tr.
  10. "Owen Matthews 'Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of a Russian America'". Pushkin House.
  11. "Dining With the Author: Dangerous Misadventures With Owen Matthews". HuffPost.
  12. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/books/glorious-misadventures-a-history-by-owen-matthews.html?smid=go-share&_r=0
  13. "Glorious Misadventures, by Owen Mathews – review". The Spectator.
  14. "Imagine that Russia had colonised America". News – Telegraph Blogs.
  15. http://www.lesescales.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ESCALES-LBF-2013.pdf
  16. "Ullstein Buchverlage". Ullstein Buchverlage: Winterkinder. 2 June 2015.
  17. "Région Lorraine – Cinq prix, 500 auteurs attendus". estrepublicain.fr.
  18. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24008245-thinking-with-the-blood
  19. https://www.babelio.com/livres/Matthews-Lombre-du-sabre/896392
  20. Bullough, Oliver (18 March 2019). "An Impeccable Spy review – wine, women and state secrets". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 3 August 2019.
  21. https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2019/12/07/our-books-of-the-year
  22. https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2019/12/07/our-books-of-the-year
  23. https://booksinthemedia.thebookseller.com/reviews/black-sun
  24. https://www.ft.com/content/8abea34a-0c12-11ea-b2d6-9bf4d1957a67
  25. http://nivet-carzon.com/?p=965
  26. Andrei Muchnik. "Russian TV Comes to Londongrad". The Moscow Times.
  27. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5905344/fullcredits
  28. https://zen.yandex.ru/media/id/5b2a9657c4e44000aafcb7c8/kto-takoi-ouen-metius-kotoryi-stal-populiarnym-posle-uchastiia-v-60-minut-5d873b5da06eaf00ad1d701a
  29. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JINBusImdC0
  30. https://esquire.ru/articles/46302-inside-russian-television/#part1
  • Newsweek Magazine author page
  • Spectator Magazine author page
  • Pushkin House Prize author interview
  • Guardian First Books Award author interview
  • Nancy Literary Festival author interview
  • Huffington Post author interview
  • Forbes Magazine article on Matthews' Russia coverage
  • Profile on TNT
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