Author Masha Karp discusses her book, "George Orwell and Russia." Masha is the editor of the Orwell Society Journal and a board member of the Orwell Society. In addition to writing "George Orwell and Russia" in English, she has written the first biography of George Orwell to appear in Russian, and has translated Animal Farm into Russian. From 1991 to 2009, she worked for the BBC Russian Service, first as a producer and later as features editor.

Playwright and director Peter Sturm discusses his London-based production of Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Dream of a Ridiculous Man," which is performed by actor Tom Larkin.

The genre-bending story, which has aspects of gothic horror, science fiction, and religious parable, first appeared in Dostoevsky's "A Writer's Diary" in 1877, alongside some of the writer's most nationalistic essays. But can Dostoevsky's unreliable narrator's message of universal love be interpreted as "an antidote to war"?

More info about the production:

splitmoontheatre.org

tomlarkinproductions.co.uk

Roland Elliott Brown is the author of Godless Utopia: Soviet Anti-Religious Propaganda with FUEL Publishing. He has written for New Lines, The Critic, The Spectator, The Guardian, and Foreign Policy, among other publications.