Machiavelli's Boss Boris

About the Book

Russian tycoon Boris Kievsky is not mad but he is afraid of what money and power can do to his grip on reality. When pressures of work and marriage become unsupportable, he escapes into the fictional world of Renaissance, where he befriends Niccolo Machiavelli and commits heroic deeds to win the favor of the most brilliant women of the age. In this fantasy world Boris hires Machiavelli as his business adviser because Machiavelli has the knack of making moral dilemmas seem less of a nuisance. Machiavelli also assists Boris in his amorous conquests. Be it Donna Benvenida Abravanel, wife to the King of the Jews and banker to emperors and Popes, or the ravishing Isabella d'Este, Marchesa of Mantua, they are all an image of the ideal woman that Boris, like any other man, has imprinted somewhere deep in his being. Back in reality Boris and his best friend, business partner and chess companion Igor Beschestny are trying to outsmart each other, steal from each other, destroy each other and generally prove who is the better man. Then, when his business threatens to collapse, Boris orders the kidnap of the mistress of the only man who can save his business in order to force the man to do what Boris needs. Months later circumstances bring Boris and this woman together. Larisa is the spitting image of Benvenida and Isabella, Boris' ideal woman, the woman of his dreams. He becomes obsessed with her. In order to win her love he is prepared to lose everything he has, money, power, social position. Like Tamino in The Magic Flute, Boris goes through trials to prove that his love is true. And he almost wins through, except that his best friend, business partner and chess companion Igor Beschestny senses Boris' vulnerability and sees his chance to triumph in their ego contest.

About the Author

Grigori Gerenstein was born in Russia, from where he emigrated to Israel in 1973 and then on to England in 1976. In 2004 he returned to Russia, where he lives now, working as a reporter for Dow Jones Newswire and a number of other international news services. In 1975 Grigori’s collection of short stories, The Fall and Other Stories was published by Harper & Row in New York. He has published a number of books, including a collection of Russian stories The Terrible News, A History of the British Bank of the Middle East and his Michael Fridman trilogy (Adventures of the Wandering Jew), including The Ahasfer Game, Armageddon According To Mark and Lucrezia Borgia European Marriage Center. He has now finished his fourth novel, Machiavelli’s Boss Boris.. In 2003 he won the Royal Geographical Society's Journey of a Lifetime award. Grigori made a BBC documentary and spoke to the Royal Geographic Society on his journey to the Russian Arctic Circle town of Norilsk, where most of the world’s precious metals are mined. Grigori served in two armies, the Soviet army and the Israeli army, and has been engaged in a variety of professions, including scientific research, street cleaning, lexicography, jazz playing on a trumpet, competitive cycling, metal and oil trading and journalism, as well as acting in the theatre. He went through a few failed marriages, before hope triumphed over experience and he found the woman who could make him happy, which was the reason why he returned to Russia, the place he had made such an effort to get away from. Grigori's main interest is people as products of their history and culture. In our everyday life, whether we are conscious of it or not, our outlook on life, our very grip on reality and our decisions are determined by everything that has happened in the history of our civilization, and we ignore its lessons at our peril. As one of Grigori’s characters puts it, “If the boy is the father of the man and his culture is the mother, the boy should be married to his culture. Otherwise the man they produce will be an illegitimate bastard.”