Joshua Yaffa, 'Between Two Fires'

Joshua Yaffa discusses his book, "Between Two Fires", at Politics and Prose.

In his important new book, Yaffa, Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker and a resident of Russia for the last eight years, lays out the realities of living in Putin’s authoritative state, where, in order to be successful everyone—from entrepreneurs to health-care providers to journalists—must find a way to adapt to the autocratic regime’s capricious will. In eight detailed profiles—of the director of the country’s main television channel, an Orthodox priest challenging the church hierarchy, a Chechen humanitarian who ignores persecutions, among others—Yaffa illuminates the tactics of Putin and his cohorts and demonstrates the range of compromise, manipulation, and frustration endemic to daily life. Yaffa is in conversation with Julia Ioffe a Russian-born American journalist who covers national security and foreign policy topics for GQ.

Joshua Yaffa is a correspondent for The New Yorker in Moscow. For his work in Russia, he has been named a fellow at New America, a recipient of the American Academy’s Berlin Prize, and a finalist for the Livingston Award.

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