Reinout van der Heijden is Het Financieel Dagblad’s Moscow correspondent. In his first book Kuifje in de Sovjet-Unie (Tintin in the Soviet Union, 1991) he gave an account of his travels as a rooky journalist. In De vloek van Oesovo, which was awarded the Prix des Ambassadeurs and nominated for the Golden Owl, he reveals his talents as a historian and Slavist.
(Contact, 1996, 367 pages)
Usovo is a Russian village on the banks of the Moskva, not far from Moscow. In telling the story of this village and its inhabitants, Reinout van der Heijden gives a surprising perspective on the history of the country as a whole, using Usovo as a window to Russia. But Usovo is no ordinary village: for years it functioned as a second capital for the rulers who built their dachas there - from Alexander II and Nicholas II to Lenin, Gorbachov and Yeltsin.
