Reading Shakespeare - Part I: The Comedies

Over the last couple of months, I’ve read the collected works of William Shakespeare. I don’t think that I can add any deep insights to the vast literature on the Bard, so I just give a quick personal judgment on all of them, in the order they are printed in my collection (“The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Edited, with a Glossary, by W.J.Craig M.A., Trinity College, Dublin”; Reprint by Henry Pordes, London 1987.)

I will start with the comedies:

The Tempest

The “Tempest” left me disappointed – it’s a trite morality play, the characters left me cold. The only character I felt sympathy with is the savage Caliban, who had welcomed the shipwrecked Prospero and his daughter, then was subjugated by his magic, and is depicted as a monster to boot. I remember reading discussions of Caliban where his treatment is compared to that of indigenous people – cheated out of their homelands and then demonized when they don’t take it lying down. Caliban is no angel, but Prospero would have been more in his right to punish him for assaulting Miranda if he hadn’t enslaved him before. As in many of the following plays, the most entertaining part is the banter of the lower class people, here the sailors and servants.

The Two Gentleman of Verona

An unbelievable plot with cardboard characters and wafer-thin psychological motivation. Again, the only saving grace are the banter and the monologues of the servants.

The Merry Wives of Windsor

A really funny comedy. Not really original or psychologically deep, but well executed and full of wordplay, even if some aspects (“foreign accents are funny”) may not cater to more refined tastes nowadays.

Measure for Measure

The plot and plot twists are very construed, but it has some interesting thoughts on justice and sin. The sense of justice and the reasoning partially seem alien from today’s point of view. E.g., almost everybody accepts that sex out of wedlock is a crime, even worthy of death, and only argues that either punishing it is impractical because too many people are guilty of it, or asks for forgiveness because even those who punish for it are subject to sin. No-one comes up with what would be the main arguments today, that sex out of wedlock shouldn’t be punished at all or that the death penalty is much too harsh. On the whole, it doesn’t really work for me – the comedic parts distract from the serious issues.

The Comedy of Errors

I don’t especially like comedies of mistaken identity, but I imagine that this one can be funny on the scene if played well. As I just read it, I didn’t find it really funny. The only psychologically interesting part was where her supposed husband’s strange behavior fueled Adriana’s jealousy.

Much Ado About Nothing

Again a comedy that is saved mostly by the banter. Neither the “tragic” plot (Hero’s slander and rehabilitation), nor the “comedic” plot (Beatrice and Benedick being duped into loving each other) really work. That’s not astonishing for the tragic plot, because the tragic plots tend to be cardboard-flimsy in other Shakespearian comedies as well, but also the change for both Benedick and Beatrice from being convinced bachelors to loving each other just by being told that the other one is secretly desperately in love with them is not convincing at all.

Love’s Labour’s Lost

This one doesn’t even have got much of a plot, and it’s the better for it. Lots of banter, puns, and comic relief.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

I liked this one – a fluffy comedy with lots of wordplay and banter, and it has really funny moments – Bottom in fairyland, the bitch fight between Helena and Hermia, the audience panning the artisans’ play. The invocation of fairy magic also makes the plot about erring love and subsequent reconciliation believable. Both Helena feeling mocked by suddenly being the object of declarations of love by two men, and Hermia’s despair at her love abandoning her add some depth to the play.

The Merchant of Venice

This play has three plots that seem welded together. One of them is a morality play – the choice of boxes demanded from Portia’s suitors. The second is light comedy - Portia and Nerissa testing the faith of their fiancés. The third and central plot, Shylock trying and failing to get his revenge on Antonio, is the most serious and quite tragic.  The tragic figure is Shylock, who despite his riches loses control of his daughter and has to suffer from prejudice against his religion and from contempt for taking interest, even though the credit he provides is part of the basis for the ventures of the Christian merchants who despise him. And, as often with the oppressed, when he sees a chance for revenge, he overshoots and then is brought down by a system that is rigged against him. His demand for Antonio’s flesh is cruel and inhumane, but Shakespeare shows very well that this cruelty has its roots in the behavior of those who mercilessly mocked and abused Shylock, and suddenly plead for and demand mercy when the sharp end is pointed at them. This central plot and its execution make the play a masterpiece.

As You Like It

This play is a bit like a salad – several subplots have been mixed in a bowl, and none of them, by themselves, is very convincing or original. The villains are cardboard, and the resolutions are mostly dei ex machina – a brother’s hatred is converted to love by the other brother saving him from a conveniently arisen danger, another villain is converted to virtue by a conveniently met holy man, and both conversions happen off-stage and are just related by narrators in the play. Some scenes and characters look bolted on, as if they were meant to play a bigger role and were cut short, but forgotten to be totally taken out – an example are the scenes with Oliver Martext and William, and in general it seems to me that Touchstone’s wooing of Audrey is just a remnant of what was a bigger subplot. Nevertheless, the play has a nice cast of funny characters and a sufficient amount of witty dialogue, so it looks like it would be fun to watch.

The Taming of the Shrew

I can’t see how this play can still be played as a straight comedy nowadays. It’s quite witty, and has many funny scenes, and in this piece, even the mistaken identities make sense. But the central idea, that women need to be subservient to men and that using psychological bullying in order to subdue them is clever and to be applauded, this is an idea that today would be shared only by very misogynistic or reactionary persons. Here, Shakespeare is just a man of his times, and he isn’t even able to show Katharina the degree of understanding that he shows for Shylock in the “Merchant”. Therefor I can read it only as a document of a worldview that I don’t share, but not enjoy it as a comedy.

Another thing is the framing plot about a Lord playing with poor drunkard, making him believe that the drunkard is really a Lord who had lost his mind, having the taming of the shrew staged as a play for him to watch, and then sending him back to his life as a poor drunk again. While it is known that Shakespeare found that framing plot in a previous version of the play by another author that he re-wrote, it’s not clear how much of the framing plot was actually included when the play was staged at the Globe Theatre.  It can be read as a kind of commentary, because this is also about someone (the Lord) using his power to abuse someone less powerful, even though less damage is inflicted.

All’s Well That Ends Well

My German Shakespeare edition that I’m reading in parallel calls this “not so much a comedy as a drama with a happy ending”. That’s quite a fitting description, depending on what you call “happy”. Is it a happy ending if the girl gets the boy she wants, but the boy is a jerk? The young Count Bertram may be a valiant soldier, but he’s not only full of class conceit – which would be understandable to a degree for a man of his time and rank -, he also forgets his vows to a woman he swore to love, and slanders her when she holds him to his vows. He tells lies when he’s found out. And I can’t shake the feeling that the love he says he’s developed for Helena after her supposed death is only show for the sake of his mother and the king, whom he wants to please. (He also doesn’t love cats, which is a sure mark of a bad character.) With all this, I can’t understand why Helena still wants him after all she’s endured and witnessed from him; love surely makes blind.

Despite these misgivings, I liked the play, which has a relatively straightforward plot that is not driven mostly by accidents and dei ex machina, like many other of the comedies, but by the actions and personalities of the main characters, who also are interesting and not just cardboard. There also are comedic elements, like the scenes with the fool of the Countess of Roussillon, and the plot around the exposure of the boastful but cowardly Captain Parolles.

Twelfth-Night, or What you Will

A light but entertaining comedy of errors, with main female protagonists fleshed out enough that one cares for them. It also has a funny sub-plot about a pompous, self-important servant who is played for a fool.

The Winter’s Tale

Like “All’s Well”, this is more of a drama with a happy ending, than a full comedy. King Leontes’s jealousy, which causes the chain of events depicted, is well executed. King Polixenes’s rejection of his son’s courtship for Perdita has a certain irony – he is ruining the relationship with his son, and risks losing him, in a similar manner like Leontes ruined his friendship with him and lost his wife and children. The reconciliation and Hermione’s “resurrection” are too melodramatic for my taste. The comedic elements, especially Autolycus’s mischief, don’t really fit – it looks like Shakespeare tried to mix up a piece to please everybody.

Alexander Osang: „Die Leben der Elena Silber“

S. Fischer, 2019, 617 S.

Der Roman beschreibt die bewegte Lebensgeschichte von Elena Silber, im vorrevolutionären Russland geboren und kurz vor Ende des Sozialismus in der DDR gestorben, sowie die Versuche ihres Enkels Konstantin Stein, die ungelösten Fragen in ihrer und seiner Familiengeschichte aufzuklären. Elena Silber wird Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts geboren; ihr Vater, Anhänger der Sozialisten, wird 1905 von einem reaktionären Mob getötet. Damit beginnt eine Geschichte von Vertreibung, Flucht und Suche nach besseren Lebensmöglichkeiten. Elena heiratet einen deutschen Ingenieur und landet dadurch in NS-Deutschland; nach dem Krieg bleibt sie in Berlin hängen, wo sie 1982 stirbt. Ihr Enkel Konstantin, Anfang vierzig, geschieden, Filmemacher, wird von seiner dominanten Mutter (einer von Elenas fünf Töchtern) dazu bewegt, Elenas Lebensgeschichte zu erforschen, in dem es ungelöste Widersprüche gibt, besonders um das Verschwinden ihres Mannes nach Kriegsende. Laut Klappentext wurde der Roman von der Familiengeschichte seines Verfassers inspiriert.

Der Roman wird mit vielen Rückblenden mal aus der Sicht Elenas, mal aus der Sicht Konstantins erzählt. Abgesehen von den Rückblenden ist der Erzählstil geradlinig und gut lesbar. An vielen Stellen, besonders wenn aus der Sicht von Konstantin geschrieben, wird sie vom Dialog vorangetrieben. Die Stellen aus Elenas Sicht wirken oft distanziert, wie angelesen, und Elenas Persönlichkeit bleibt fern und verschwommen. Das trifft vor allem auf die Stellen zu, die ihr Leben in Russland beschreiben, während ihr Leben in Schlesien kurz vor und nach Kriegsende und die Jahre in Berlin lebendiger beschrieben ist, so, als wenn die größere geografische Nähe auch eine größere Nähe zur Person bewirkt. Konstantin dagegen und seine Welt gewinnen ein sehr viel klareres Profil; man merkt, dass der Verfasser die Welt, die er beschreibt – Konstantins Kindheit, die dominante Mutter, die Demenz des Vaters, die Beziehung zum Sohn aus der geschiedenen Ehe, die verschiedenen Ostberliner Milieus, in denen Konstantin sich bewegt – gut kennt.

Insgesamt ein gut lesbares Buch. Die russischen Elemente bieten eine gewisse Exotik, aber wirken oberflächlich auf jemanden, der eine gewisse Vertrautheit mit Russland mitbringt. Interessanter ist es als Teil eines großen Mosaiks, als ein weiterer Blick auf vertraute Fragen – was bedeutet Familie, wie gehen Menschen mit Beziehungen um, in welchen Formen suchen sie nach Nähe und Distanz, nach Liebe, Anerkennung, wo ist Heimat, was für Geschichten erzählen sie sich selbst und anderen. Dieser Roman ist ein weiteres Steinchen in diesem Mosaik, und dabei ein unterhaltsames, auch wenn nie wirklich aufgeklärt wird, was aus den verschwundenen Männern in der Familie der Silbers geworden ist.

Ein Buch über CO2

Here again - I don't think that anyone who doesn't read German will be interested in a German introductory overview on the role of CO2 in climate change, so the review is in German.

Ewald Weber: "Welt am Abgrund. Wie CO₂ unser Leben verändert", Darmstadt 2018 (WBG), 207 S.

Das vorliegende Buch ist eine Einführung in die Rolle von CO₂ beim Klimawandel. Die Kapitel 1 - 4 beschreiben was CO₂ ist, seine Quellen und die Mechanismen des Treibhauseffekts. Kapitel 5 - 11 stellen die Folgen für Weltklima, Natur und Menschen dar. Kapitel 12 - 15 beschreiben die Möglichkeiten, die Folgen zu vermeiden - technische Lösungen zur Entfernung von CO₂ aus der Athmosphäre und Lagerungsmöglichkeiten, Maßnahmen, die es der Natur erleichtern, CO₂ zu verarbeiten (z. B. Aufforstung) und Vermeidung. Das Buch kommt zum Schluss, dass die anderen Maßnahmen helfen können, aber nur wesentliche Verringerung von CO₂ - Ausstoß die Folgen wirksam verhindern kann.
Trotz des dramatischen Titels ist das Buch in einem sachlichen Ton geschrieben und gibt einen guten Überblick über das Thema. Für Menschen, die sich schon intensiv mit der Erderwärmung befasst haben, bietet es nichts neues und die Schlussfolgerungen des Autors entsprechen dem gegenwärtigen Konsens, wie er sich zum Beispiel auf den Klimakonferenzen beobachten lässt. Das Buch ist daher am Besten geeignet für Menschen, die dem Thema Klimawandel bisher nur oberflächlich oder ausschnittsweise in den Medien begegnet sind und sich besser informieren wollen. Das Buch enthält auch eine Bibliographie, anhand derer interessierte Leser tiefer in einzelne Aspekte einsteigen können.

Andreas Paul, "Von Affen und Menschen"

Reposted Goodreads Review:
Ein sehr guter Überblick über die Forschung zum Verhalten der Primaten (einschließlich von uns Menschen) und über verschiedene evolutionstheoretische Erklärungen. Sehr positiv ist, dass der Autor immer klar anzeigt, inwiefern Ergebnisse und Erklärungen durch Beobachtungen und Experimente gestützt sind. Das Buch ist verständlich und lebendig geschrieben.
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A very good overview over the state of research on primate behaviour (including us humans) and over the various evolution based explanantions. It's very positive that the author always indicates clearly how far results and explanations are based on observations and experiments. The book is written in a comprehensible and lively language.

Norbert Wolf "Malerei Verstehen"

This is a re-posting of my Goodreads Review. The review is in German - I assume most pepople interested in a German introduction to painting are more likely to read German than English.
Это - краткая рецензия немецкой  книги - введения в живопись. Так как я предполагаю, что человек, заинтересованный читать такую книгу, знает немецкий язык, данная рецензия - на немецком. 
Das Buch ist eine Einführung in die Malerei, nach Sachgebieten geordnet (Farben, Farbe contra Zeichnung, Prozess des Malens, Gliederung der Bildfläche, Malerei und Raum, Bildgattungen, Malerei und Gesellschaft, Malerei zwischen Illustration und Abstraktion). Leider werden viele Themen nur sehr kurz angerissen (z. B. Farben, Maltechniken) - der Autor zählt ein paar Schlagworte auf, ohne zu erklären, was sie bedeuten. Es enthält auch zu wenig Illustrationen -  so wird eine Wandmalerei von Matisse über zwei Seiten hinweg diskutiert, aber es gibt keine Abbildung im Buch.
Teilweise sind zwar Illustrationen vorhanden, so werden z. B. die Fresken Giottos in der Arenakapelle in der Gesamtansicht gezeigt (Abbildung Nr. 15), so dass sehr schön die Einordnung der Fresken in den Raum zu erkennen ist. Aber Wolf diskutiert auf S. 89 auch die Komposition eines Ausschnitts aus dem Fresko, der auf der Abbildung nicht erkennbar ist.
Manche Themen, wie "Malerei und Gesellschaft", leiden weniger darunter. Aber um den Anspruch des Buchs zu erfüllen (Klappentext: "Ob Kunstkritik, Vernissage oder Museumsbesuch: Mit 'Malerei Verstehen' ist man immer gut vorbereitet"), wären detailliertere Erläuterungen und mehr anschauliche Illustrationen notwendig gewesen.

A Clockwork Clocked

I had put off reading "A Clockwork Orange" for a long time. It's a book that has become part of common cultural knowledge, and the things I knew about it - the ultraviolence, the nadsat slang - didn't really entice me to read it. That despite the fact that I liked what else I've read by Burgess - "One Hand Clapping" is a very funny read, and "Language Made Plain" is the one book I'd recommend for a popular introduction into the history and workings of the English language.

But then my daughter left her edition of "Clockwork" behind when she went off to study recently, and I started reading. And I didn't put it down - well, almost, I interrupted reading maybe once or twice.

It turns out that the ultraviolence, while taking up a substantial part of the book, is described not too gorily, and then we're probably nowadays too used to graphically described violence - the book contains less blood and gore than the average episode of Game of Thrones. And the violence is not gratuitous, but again, it's a well-known fact that good and evil and the role of choice betwen them are central topics of the book.
The nadsat - a slang containing a large part of Russian - was also less of a hindrance to understanding than I had assumed. As I speak Russian reasonably well, some of it grated and felt unnatural; gloopy for "stupid" sounds natural, but a lot of the loaned verbs didn't look like natural candidates for loaning and their English adaptations feel forced. But on the whole, it gives the book its very own flavour. Some of the words escaped me for quite some time, simply because the adaptations in English don't sound much like their Russian originals. I only understood in the middle of the book that horrorshow is Russian хорошо, and even more embarrassingly, it took me until the last pages to get that lewdies "people" is not derived from lewd, but Russian люди.

Now you ask, this is all faint praise or no praise at all, so what kept me hooked? It's the voice, the language, the way Alex (the first-person-narrator) talks.  It's enchanting, taking you along on the ride, making you want to find out more about the character. He has a great lot of negative traits and for his actions he'd deserve contempt or hate, and in the chapters after his treatment he's quite pathetic, but still the narrating voice is like a tasty drink that I couldn't put down. The only other narrator who can capture me like that is Isaak Babel, who also knows how to tell horrible tales with a voice that you don't want to stop listening to.

And despite the fact that the book's content has become a part of popular culture, the ending still was surprising.

Gravity

Last Saturday, inspired by several glowing reviews, we went to see “Gravity”. If you haven’t watched it yet, you probably at least have heard about it – George Clooney and Sandra Bullock are astronauts; when a shower of debris from a blown-up satellite destroys their station and space shuttle, they have to find a way to get back to Earth. By some reviews it has been billed as a ”new Science Fiction Classic”. So, does it measure up?
A nitpick first - can a film be Science Fiction just because it is set in space, even if what is shown is the contemporary workday environment of space missions? OK, there's a Chinese space station, but there don't seem to be any technologies that don't exist or aren't applied in space missions today, and the problem of space debris is already an acute problem, even if up to now no serious accidents have happened. But we can let that slide.
One important feature the reviews mention is that it’s a film where 3D is done right and used for more than gimmickry. I must admit that I cannot say anything about this, as due to my bad left eye I don’t have spatial vision and 3D glasses don’t work for me. But I can say that the film offers quite impressive views even in 2D.
The film offers lots of motion action, mostly trying to move towards an object and get a hold on it in order not to drift off into space, dodging space debris, and trying to get technology to work before debris, gravity, or lack of oxygen kill our protagonists. The film does that well, with the right tempo, but the film is not an end-to-end roller coaster – there are quieter scenes that concentrate on the background and fears of Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock) and her interactions with co-astronaut Matt Kowalski (Clooney). There was not a boring moment. So, the film is good entertainment. On the other hand, most of the thrill of the film comes from the motion and the suspense – will they make it back to Earth? Now that I know the outcome, the suspense is gone, and for me, there’s not much in the film that would reward a second or third viewing. Yes, there are some nice vistas of space, and a few emotional scenes well played by Bullock, but it’s not a film I’d want to watch over and over again, so “new SF Classic” it is not. But if you haven’t watched it yet, I can recommend going for the ride.

Skyfall

Again it took me a long time to catch up - here, it's with Daniel Craig as 007. I best like the way Sean Connery defined the role, and Pierce Brosnan came closest to that image of James Bond. So, when I first read about the "new, gritty" James Bond that appeared in "Casino Royale", I didn't like it a bit, and subsequently didn't watch any of the Craig Bond movies.
I guess I have to thank Adele for singing the title song - it really is a little gem, and it has stuck in my ear. It even made me want to watch the film, and finally I did. I was pleasantly surprised. "Skyfall" has the mixture of lots of action and a dose of humour that make a good Bond movie. Craig doesn't have Connery's roguish or Brosnan's boyish charm, but his quiet, deadpan manner is not a bad substitute. While Connery ambled through his adventures like they were an interesting, amusing game, and Brosnan seemed to be able to draw on an internal innocence that made any damages to the soul temporary, Craig doesn't let you forget for a minute that his business is an unpleasant one that leaves the soul scarred. Not that he's moaning or complaining, but his stoic poise betrays that there is suffering that the stoicity needs to mask.
I liked the humorous touches - Bond swaying to the rhythm of the original Bond theme, Moneypenny, the "circle of life" remark... I also liked the ambiguity of the ending - after all, the result of Bond's actions in the grand finale were the same two deaths that Silver had wanted (not counting the collateral henchmen damage), only they happened on Bond's and M's terms, not on Silver's. It's a difference that matters. But it's a far cry from earlier Bonds saving the world.
Still, if that's the new grittiness, it's OK with me. Now the other Craig 007 films are firmly on my viewing list.

Primakov & King Hussein

In my Primakov review I noted:

I was surprised about his positive assessment of Binyamin Netanyahu and his negative assessment of Shimon Peres, as this is the opposite one would have expected from a Soviet / Russian diplomat based on their political positions.

Now I find in an Economist review of a biography of the late Jordanian King Hussein that he had a similar assessment of these politicians:

Mr Shlaim concedes that the king was occasionally naive and impulsive, and could put too much store on personality and too little on ideology. On this score, his most grievous misjudgments were briefly to prefer the right-wing Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu, whom he seemed to back (perhaps even tipping the scales) against Shimon Peres, whom he did not trust, in the Israeli election of 1996;

As Primakov claims to have counted himself a friend of King Hussein, that similarity may not be accidental. It would be interesting to know who influenced whose opinion in that matter.

Review of Evgenij Primakov, "Konfidendencial'no: Blizhnij Vostok na scene i za kulisami"

In different roles - as journalist, intelligence agent, and on diplomatic missions for the Soviet Union, as foreign minister and prime minister for the Russian Federation -, Evgenij Primakov has observed and participated in shaping Middle East politics over forty years. In the reviewed book, the title of which in translation means "Confidential: The Middle East on stage and behind the scenes", the author shares some of this experience with the reader.
It is not a history of the Middle East or of individual problems. The book is a collection of sketches on factors, problems, players, and events, like Arab Socialist Nationalism, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Soviet and American strategies in the region, the Lebanese Civil war, Arafat, Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi Kurds, nuclear weapons in the region.
None of these sketches aspire to present a full picture. Besides giving a short historical background, they heavily concentrate on the diplomatic background, especially the backdrop of the US-Soviet rivalry, on the Soviet involvement and positions in individual countries and conflicts, and on the activities of the author. Quite often the author skips a decade or two during which he was not involved and finishes the sketch with an assessment of the current situation, which therefore frequently comes a bit out of the blue, as readers must understand what happened in the meantime from a few sentences or supplement it from their own knowledge of the events.
As anybody who has observed Primakov would expect, the author shows all signs of having grown up and lived in the USSR as a loyal citizen. His terminology is still communist - he uses terms like "left deviation" or "petty-bourgeois revolutionary" without irony, "progressive" means "communist" or "socialist", Arab countries are labelled democracies if the local communist party is in power or at least allowed to be active.
But his communism seems more a case of habit than of ideological conviction. Overall, Primakov is a pragmatist who serves his country - first the USSR, now Russia. In this, he has made the transition to post-communist derzhavnik like many other Russians of his generation.
For that reason, one shouldn't expect too many surprises in this book. The author is still sometimes employed in diplomatic missions in the Middle East, and therefore he is not writing anything that could harm Russia's position in the region. A few bureaucratic scores are settled in the book, e.g. with a circle of people around Podgornyj, who didn't want to recognise that Sadat was turning Egypt from a Soviet client into an American client, but that considers cases at least thirty years ago that have no bearing on contemporary positions any more. Primakov also criticises those in the Soviet Union that wanted to work with the local communist parties to set up local client regimes; again, as the Arab communist parties were a failure almost everywhere, as no Communist regime was ever successfully established except in Southern Yemen, and as the communists were rivals to the Socialist Nationalists that became the usual allies of the USSR in the Arab world, this is not a terribly surprising or controversial point.
As I'm not a specialist on Middle East or on Soviet politics, it is hard for me to assess how much in this book is really new. The materials on the secret diplomatic contacts between the USSR and Israel in the seventies, when officially no diplomatic relations existed between these countries, seem certainly interesting, especially as Primakov, being the emissary, speaks from first-hand experience. At least for me the author's assessment of the Yom Kippur war - that Sadat was goaded into it by the Americans who wanted to improve his position in preparation for the later separate peace with Israel (and who were not amused when the Israelis tripped up their scheme by winning again) - was something I hadn't heard of before, which probably only shows how little I've read on that topic. Primakov's assessment of Saddam Hussein - that he believed until the last moments of his life that the Americans only wanted to teach him lessons, but would always leave him in (or, after his fall, put him back into) power because they needed a strong Iraq led by him as a counterweight to Iran - would explain a lot about his constant brinkmanship, and also would show how far from reality his mind had strayed. On the level of personalities, I was surprised about his positive assessment of Binyamin Netanyahu and his negative assessment of Shimon Peres, as this is the opposite one would have expected from a Soviet / Russian diplomat based on their political positions.
The book is interesting on several levels. It allows some insights into the debates going on inside Soviet foreign policy circles in the sixties to eighties. It shows the continuities between the Soviet and the Russian foreign policy approach in the Middle East. And there are many small stories and anecdotes from Primakov's personal experience that make the book more than a dry political treatise.

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Евгений Примаков, "Конфиденциально: Ближний Восток на сцене и за кулисами", Москва, "Российская Газета", 2006