Emmanuel Carrère's Biography of Édouard Limonov: A Fascist Monster or a Great Writer?

Emmanuel Carrère has published a nearly 500-page biography of the controversial Russian writer and political figure Édouard Limonov. Limonov, born on February 2, 1943, the son of an NKVD member, was a Soviet underground idol, a homeless man in New York, a butler to a billionaire, a fashionable writer in Paris, a soldier in the Balkans, and later the leader of the National Bolshevik Party. He was known for his nationalist, fascist, and Stalinist views, his involvement in ethnic cleansing alongside Serbs, and his friendships with figures like Jean-Marie Le Pen and Alain de Benoist. However, Carrère's biography reveals a more complex figure: Limonov also fought against Putin and Russian oligarchies alongside Gary Kasparov, Elena Bonner, and Anna Politkovskaya, and was imprisoned in 2001. Carrère, who had previously written about Limonov in his 2007 book "Politique," draws on interviews, testimonies, and Limonov's own autobiographical writings, including "The Poet Who Preferred Big Blacks" (1980) and "Diary of a Loser" (1982), which the reviewer praises as great literature. The biography challenges the reader to reconcile the monstrous political figure with the sensitive, talented writer.