The Useful Idiot

Written by John Sweeney

Narrated by John Sweeney

Moscow, 1932. Gareth Jones, a young Welsh reporter, arrives in the Soviet Union excited to see for himself how Josef Stalin is forging a new civilization.

He meets American and British journalists who acclaim Stalin's great experiment-but when Jones witnesses people starving to death in Ukraine, his belief in the Soviet revolution is shattered.

He must decide whether to report the truth or become just another useful idiot, saying only what the Communist secret police allow and smothering the evidence of his own eyes.

In this special kind of hell, anyone could be an informer, and Jones knows his life will be at risk if he is even thought to be defying Stalin. And when the woman he loves falls under the suspicion of the secret police, everything Jones values is in danger.

Can he reveal the terrible truth about the Ukrainian famine to the world, or will he be silenced forever?

The Useful Idiot is the secret history of the first great Soviet lie-wrapped up in an electrifying novel perfect for fans of Robert Harris, Ken Follett, Frederick Forsyth, John le Carre, and Kate Atkinson.

As Vladimir Putin rewrites the Nazi-Soviet pact, and with the horrors of Chernobyl and the Cold War so recent, this thriller of fake news in 1932 is real storytelling of enormous significance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Dec 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781705232804

John Sweeney

John Sweeney is a writer and journalist who, while working for the BBC, has challenged both Donald Trump over his association with a Russian-born gangster—Trump walked out on him—and Vladimir Putin over the war in Ukraine. Sweeney became a YouTube sensation in 2007, when, while filming ‘Scientology and Me’ for Panorama, he lost his temper with Tommy Davis, a senior member of the Church of Scientology. As a reporter, first for the Observer and then for the BBC, Sweeney has covered wars and chaos in more than eighty countries and been undercover to a number of tyrannies, including Chechnya, North Korea and Zimbabwe. He has helped free seven people falsely convicted of killing their babies, starting with Sally Clark and Angela Cannings. Over the course of his career, John has won an Emmy, two Royal Television Society Awards, a Sony Gold Award, a What the Papers Say Journalist of the Year Award, an Amnesty International Award and the Paul Foot Award. Sweeney’s first novel, Elephant Moon, was published to much acclaim in 2012. His hobby is annoying the Church of Scientology.

Reviews for The Useful Idiot

[Brandon Law · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Outstanding! This book is essential reading right up there with 1984, Atlas Shrugged, and Gulag Archipelago.