The Showman

WRITTEN WITH UNPRECEDENTED ACCESS, THIS IS THE FIRST INSIDE, INTIMATE ACCOUNT OF THE RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF PRESIDENT ZELENSKY AND HIS TEAM.

Based on four years of reporting; extensive travels with President Zelensky to the front; and dozens of interviews with him, his wife, his friends and enemies, his advisers, ministers and military commanders, The Showman tells an intimate and eye-opening story of the President’s evolution from a slapstick actor to a symbol of resilience, revealing how he managed to rally the world’s democracies behind his cause.

Clear-eyed about the President’s early failures as a peacemaker and his willingness to silence political dissent, the book offers a complex picture of a man struggling to break what he sees as a historical cycle of oppression that began generations before he was born. Even as the war drags on, Zelensky lays out his vision for its future course and, through his actions, demonstrates his strategy for countering the Russians and keeping the West on his side. The result is a riveting, up-close picture of the invasion as experienced by its number one target and improbable hero.

The Showman, as a work of eyewitness journalism, provides an essential perspective on the war defining our age. As a study in leadership and human resolve, its appeal is timeless and universal.

Review

'Superb… in coming years, there may be [many] biographies of Zelensky… few, though, will better Shuster’s credentials. A fluent Russian speaker, he knew Zelensky’s team long before the war, remaining part of the inner circle when the president became the world’s most in-demand interviewee. In the invasion’s early days, he was among the few journalists allowed through the formidable security of the wartime bunker…The result is a vivid account of life beneath the ground at 11 Bankova Street in Kyiv… an elegant account of the invasion’s first year as seen by those in the very eye of the storm'

Daily Telegraph

'A brilliant piece of extended reportage … Shuster’s book does justice to a complex man, who is fighting our fight as well as his own'

The Times

A compelling piece of living history and Shuster, who has reported from Russia and Ukraine for the best part of two decades, skilfully pieces together the transformation of Zelensky… highly readable'

Independent

‘An intense, evocative portrait of one of the most remarkable figures of our era. This book offers a front row seat to history as it is being made’

Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Twilight of Democracy

‘A narrative tour de force that takes us deep behind the scenes of the Ukrainian president’s bunker during the tensest days of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Shuster gives an astonishingly intimate portrayal of the former comedian turned wartime leader battling to save his nation – and Europe – that nevertheless maintains a doggedly honest and critical balance'

Catherine Belton, author of Putin’s People

About the Author

SIMON SHUSTER has reported from Russia and Ukraine for seventeen years, most of that time as a staff writer for Time magazine. His coverage of the war began in 2014, when he arrived in Crimea as Russian troops took over the peninsula. In 2019, he met and interviewed Volodymyr Zelensky for a profile of his presidential campaign, then continued covering his administration in the years that followed – first traveling to the war zone with the president in April 2021, as the Russians gathered their armies at the border. When the full-scale invasion began the following year, Simon spent months embedded with the president’s team, securing unparalleled access to their compound in Kyiv, where he wrote The Showman, his first book.