This book presents an ethnographic study of the reading practices of the Russian-speaking diaspora in London and the United Kingdom, based on the author’s fieldwork conducted before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research focuses primarily on participation in the Waterstones Russian Book Club and traces its transformation from an in-person gathering into a global, transnational online platform. The book consists of seven chapters, framed by an introduction and conclusion, and combines literary, anthropological, and sociolinguistic perspectives on diasporic cultural life.
Chapter 1 offers a useful overview of literaturocentrism and its historical significance in Russian and Soviet culture. The author convincingly links the dissolution of the USSR to the decline of state-sponsored literaturocentrism (33), while also acknowledging the persistence of reading as a cultural value beyond the Soviet period. The concluding section of the chapter draws a connection between Soviet government-sponsored literaturocentrism and contemporary Russian state efforts to “export literaturocentrism,” notably through the activities of Rossotrudnichestvo.
Chapter 2 moves to the core of the study: diasporic readers, examined through the case of the Waterstones Russian Book Club. The description of the club’s composition, organization, and book selection process is clear and informative. The author, a male non-native Russian speaker, reflects on his own experiences of partial exclusion and alienation within a group composed predominantly of female native speakers. This reflexive element usefully highlights the gendered and linguistic dynamics of the reading community.
Chapter 3 foregrounds the club’s social dimension, emphasizing activities such as games, quizzes, and gift-giving, as well as shared memories of the past. These practices are presented as central to the group’s cohesion. Chapter 4, titled “Reconciliation and Nostalgia for the Soviet Past,” focuses on book club discussions of Zakhar Prilepin’s Obitelʹ (The Monastery). Readers’ responses reveal generational differences in the interpretation of Gulag narratives, with many participants embracing what the author describes as Prilepin’s narrative of reconciliation and closure (105). While this analysis is one of the book’s most compelling sections, the absence of a discussion situating Obitelʹ within the broader Gulag literary canon represents a missed opportunity. The subsequent discussion of Soviet nostalgia—particularly memories of pioneer camps and forms of “counter-culture” linked to an event commemorating Joseph Brodsky—introduces intriguing themes, though their connection to the chapter’s central argument is not always fully developed.
Chapter 5 introduces the concept of “diasporic literaturocentrism,” defined as the preservation of “core elements of the cultural myth, including a deep appreciation for highbrow literature, ritualized readership, and the veneration of writers” (128). This is a promising analytical framework, but the book offers limited critical engagement with what constitutes “highbrow” literature for London-based Russian-speaking readers. Authors such as Prilepin and Guzel Yakhina are not universally regarded as highbrow, and readers’ interpretations are sometimes presented without sufficient contextualization or critical reflection. A more reflexive discussion of these tensions—between canon formation, taste, and readers’ cultural competence—would have strengthened the argument.
Chapter 6 examines visits by Russian-language writers and the reverential attitudes displayed by book club members, interpreting these encounters as a continuation of Soviet-era literary traditions. The final chapter addresses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Russian-language reading communities and the club’s shift to online formats, followed by a brief discussion of changes after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While timely, this concluding section feels somewhat cursory; a more extended engagement with how geopolitical rupture reshapes diasporic cultural practices would have added analytical depth.
Overall, the book adopts an optimistic tone toward the Soviet legacy of reading, presenting literaturocentrism as a cultural force capable of uniting Russian speakers across borders. The Soviet period is treated with nuance, as state-driven policies promoting approved authors are discussed alongside dissident engagement with samizdat and tamizdat. Literaturocentrism thus emerges as a complex phenomenon encompassing both official cultural production and underground, counter-hegemonic practices. The discussion of diaspora is consistently informative. Notably, most book club participants reject the term “diaspora,” associating it with earlier migration waves characterized by nostalgia and irreversible loss. Interviewees instead describe themselves as mobile subjects able to move freely between countries. Nevertheless, the author insists on the term “diasporans,” a choice that sits somewhat uneasily with participants’ self-understandings and might have benefited from deeper theoretical justification.
One of the book’s most engaging sections is the analysis of readers’ responses to Obitelʹ. As a whole, however, the study devotes relatively little attention to readers’ interpretations of literary texts beyond this case. Greater engagement with discussions of other works read by the club, such as Yakhina’s Moi deti (My Children), would have enriched the literary dimension of the study. The sections on visiting writers are similarly interesting, particularly the claim that Russian émigrés read more than readers in Russia itself. Contextualizing this assertion with empirical data on declining reading habits in Russia and globally would have strengthened the analysis.
In sum, Diaspora Reads offers a valuable ethnographic snapshot of London-based Russian-speaking readers in the years preceding and immediately following the pandemic. Its strengths lie in its detailed account of social practices, such as gift-giving, games, and ritualized literary encounters that illuminate the persistence of Soviet cultural legacies. Its limitations stem from limited engagement with textual interpretation and the absence of sustained discourse analysis. The notion of taste, in particular, remains underdeveloped. What does it mean for post-Soviet women readers, the majority of book club participants, to perform “good taste” through book club participation? How do these practices function as markers of cultural capital, class distinction, or respectability? The fact that some participants reportedly do not read the assigned books raises further questions about whether the club functions primarily as a social space and how this relates to Soviet ideals of being “cultured.”
This book will be of interest to scholars of diaspora studies, sociolinguistics, cultural anthropology, and post-Soviet cultural history. While its ethnographic insights are substantial, readers seeking sustained literary analysis may find the discussion of texts insufficient. The study succeeds as a cultural snapshot but leaves significant interpretive questions open for future research.
