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… 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

'The most intimate portrait of Zelensky, the man at the center of the world drama, painted by one of the best writers in the field, Simon Shuster. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand what Ukrainians are fighting for and why they will prevail'

Serhii Plokhy, author of The Russo-Ukrainian War

'A definitive, thoroughly researched and deeply insightful biography'

Guardian

'The Showman surpasses all similar efforts to date and is set to be the standard by which all other works on Mr. Zelensky and Ukraine’s wartime politics will be judged'

Wall Street Journal

'This book is a historical milestone. No journalist in recent memory has had such unique access to the people changing our world in real time. Thanks to Simon Shuster and this brilliant, sincere, and truthful book, readers today―and future generations―will have a chance to learn the inside of this war and to understand Volodymyr Zelensky'

Mikhail Zygar, author of All the Kremlin's Men

'Using interviews with the Ukrainian president, his closest associates and his critics, Shuster crafts an intimate account of the Russian invasion, which vividly captures Zelensky’s transformation from a clean-cut funnyman into a war hero out of central casting'

New York Times Book Review

About the Author

SIMON SHUSTER is a senior correspondent for Time magazine based in New York and the magazine's former bureau chief in Berlin, where he was responsible for coverage of the European Union and the former Soviet Union. His family immigrated from Moscow to the United States in 1989 and settled in San Francisco, where Simon grew up. After serving as a writer and editor at the Stanford Daily, his university newspaper, Simon returned to Moscow in 2006 to work as a journalist and joined Time magazine there in 2013. He returned to the U.S. in February 2020 to work on the nation desk.