Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Formerly Russia’s richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky is approaching year eight of a thirteen-year prison sentence — a sentence that is widely believed to be politically motivated. He’s spent quite a bit of the time writing, reflecting on life in prison and politics in Russia.

And according to an article in the Los Angeles TImes by Sergei L. Loiko, he’s not bad. Says Loiko:

It is too early to seriously judge Khodorkovsky’s literary merits as a storyteller, says Russian literary critic Benedikt Sarnov. But “he is growing fast both morally and spiritually, and the way he notices things around him, singles out stories and their heroes, carries visible grains of writing that may eventually put him close to such pillars of Russian prose as Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Varlam Shalamov,” revered authors who experienced the Russian prison system.

Popular Russian writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya, who has exchanged several letters with Khodorkovsky, says he is “an exclusively talented man” and that his writing has quickly improved.

A selection of Khodorkovsky’s work is available in English translation on the Khodorovsky & Lebedev Communications Center website.

Emily Albarillo is an intern at Melville House.