Thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's smart, blackly humorous and completely riveting.

Full review over at Reading in Progress ( )

I probably should not have read the author's whine about the trouble he had finding a publisher before I read this Early Reviewer novel. Levitt bemoans the fact that it is difficult to find publishers of historical novels because readers want something faster and more interesting. What fascinated me in reading the novel was that I was thoroughly captivated for about the first third of the novel, then Levitt and his characters got so bogged down in their own fears and schemes that it became tedious to read the second third. The last third was interesting again, but the ending was not nearly a happy one and it did, indeed, feel rushed. I recommended this to another ER friend, so I'll be interested in her take on the story. I would recommend this, not to true historians, but to those who like their history a bit tweaked. ( )

Razan's story of becoming Stalin's barber may sound fantastic and contrived to our Western sensibilities, but I found it for the most part believable. There was paranoia and tyranny and many loyal and disloyal Russian were liquidated for the slightest implication of suspicion. The novel, and it is a work of fiction, not history captures the lives of its characters who must live in constant fear and caution of informers among their neighbors, friends and even family. Hard for us to comprehend this type of society, how lucky we are. I visited Russia a few years ago, and their political outlook is very different - even though the Soviet Union is no more, many of the attitudes and paranoia remain. The stories about Stalin in this book are not that far-fetched. ( )

During the 1930's, Stalin's Russia was a place of unstable life. Most of us have heard much of the slaughter of the peasants - entire villages wiped out seemingly on the whim of the leadership. We also know of the systematic and regular culling of those same leaders who worked directly under Stalin himself. This story is a bit different, though. It is about the middle-class of the time. The skilled workers and their families - people who created the good life for the leadership - the tailors, chefs and bakers, gardeners, stylists... the barbers. As the title tells us, this is a story of one of [Stalin's Barber]'s. We follow the life of a wonderfully skilled Albanian barber, Avraham Bahar (who later changed his name to Razeen Shtube for both professional and personal reasons) and that of his family. [[Paul M. Levitt]] has taken a slice of life of that perilous time, and woven the lives of the family members in such a manner that the reader can experience, from a distance, how people lived, coped with, and continued to live - or died - in this time. ( )

Razan Shtube is an Albanian barber who gives haircuts in the Turkish style. What is the Turkish style, you may ask? It involves singeing ear hairs with flaming alcohol using a cotton swab. Shtube is an artist who was taught the trade by his father. Shtube decides he must leave an increasingly facsist Albania in the early 1930s. He chooses to go to the Soviet Union and lands in a small rural town where he replaces a recently deceased barber. He marries a widow, Anna, who has grown children. Anna's children become caught up in the Stalinist Soviet state where they become functionaries, one in the secret police, one in the officially recognized Russian church, and one who is a secretary in the Archives of Denunciation where informers letters are kept. There is a wealth of information of the paranoia and cult of personality of Stalin. Stalin is refered to as Koba and Vozhd. Koba was a pseudonym used by Stalin in Tsarist days, Vozhd is the Russian word for leader. Shtube becomes Stalin's barber after his stepson in the NKVD recommends him for the job. Shtube will live near the Kremlin and have a privileged life in the USSR, but at what price? He assumes his apartment is bugged (it is). Like most Muscovites he walks in the park to carry on sensitive conversations. He learns that Stalin's last barber, a Muslim from Tashkent, has been sent to the Gulag. Shtube manages to rescue the man's daughter from a state run orphanage. Stalin eventually sours on Shtube and he and Anna and the children must flee the people's paradise for Finland. The Russo-Finnish War is on and there is mass confusion on the border. Before leaving, Shtube attempts to cut Koba's throat while barbering him. He has heard rumors of the Vozhd's use of doubles and wonders if has he killed the evil one or not? ( )