An American author’s Jan. 6 novel has become the first English-language book released by a dissident Russian publisher whose works are banned by the government in Moscow.
The London-based Freedom Letters recently issued Pushcart Prize-winning author Russell Working’s The Insurrectionist, a satire of woke journalism and scathing commentary on the prosecution of nonviolent Jan. 6ers.
The book has been released in English and will soon be published in a Russian translation.
In Working’s novel, a Chicago reporter seeks to salvage his stymied career by investigating an elephant-owning farmer who protested nonviolently outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The journalist gins up an FBI probe, only to learn that his progressive teenage daughter is dating the farmer’s conservative, gun-owning son, entangling her in the case.
Defying the official narrative, the novel explores the abusive nature of politicized prosecutions—a perspective that appealed to Freedom Letters’ publisher, Georgy Urushadze.
Freedom Letters focuses on dissident writers such as former Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky and Putin opponent Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison last year.
Publisher banned in Russia
Freedom Letters has been banned for issuing books deemed dangerous for Putin’s regime, Urushadze says. Some of the books were personally quashed by the prosecutor general, and the government has restricted the entire publishing house’s circulation of its books. Freedom Letters’ website is also blocked in Russia.
“I’ve been designated a ‘foreign agent’ by a decision of the Kremlin, and a court dependent on the president has refused to overturn this,” Urushadze says. “Nevertheless, we publish and sell our books in Russia using guerrilla ways.”
The addition of The Insurrectionist to Freedom Letters’ list reflects a recognition of U.S. government overreach in prosecutions of J6ers.
The author’s wife, Nonna Working, translated the book. Max Nemtsov, who edited the Russian version, praises the book piercing political satire.
“This book takes its place in a long and esteemed tradition, from Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal to John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces and P.J. O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores,” says Nemtsov.
Jan. 6er Christina Kelso writes, “This book deliciously satirizes the January 6 experience. As one of the 1,561 arrested for the new crime of peaceful protest, I found The Insurrectionist a tender portrait that vividly captures our collective nightmare. I loved this book and want to read it again.”
Reader Geraldo writes in a five-star review, “You will find [in The Insurrectionist ] a hint of Kurt Vonnegut-like dark humor and a strong undertone of Joseph Heller’s classic ‘Catch-22’ novel. … The Insurrectionist is the most likely book this year to be canceled by the hateful left because it is far too much of an expose’ of the hardcore politically correct for their comfort.”
Freedom Letters serves as a “gathering point for a scattered and disoriented diaspora and for everyone who cherishes the word ‘freedom,’” Urushadze says.
“We publish works by the best and most talented authors in Ukrainian, Russian, Belarusian, and English. No limits on themes or formats.”
Award-winning author
Working, who has lived in Oak Park since 2003, has two previous fiction collections: Resurrectionists, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Award, and The Irish Martyr, winner of the University of Notre Dame’s Sullivan Award. The title story of The Irish Martyr was included in Pushcart’s 2005 anthology. He has won numerous short fiction awards and twice received the Hackney Award for the Novel. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
A freelance writer, Working is a former staff reporter for the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers. He spent over six years freelancing abroad in Russia and Cyprus. His byline has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Japan Times, The Jerusalem Post, Kyoto Journal, The Paris Review, BusinessWeek, the South China Morning Post, TriQuarterly, Zoetrope: All-Story, Crazyhorse, The Atlantic, Columbia Journalism Review, and scores of other publications worldwide.
Publisher’s Weekly has praised Working’s fiction as “reminiscent of the early Paul Bowles, with the same muscular use of language, the same ability to create a mood fraught with tension.”
The New York Times commended Working’s “amazing ability to draw the reader immediately into the world about which he is writing, whether it is the paper mills of the Pacific Northwest, where a former policeman is almost courting death, the Haiti of voodoo and the dread Tonton Macoutes, or the lazy hot summer afternoons of a group of young boys.”
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