The Olympic Tower

A cinematic story with a tense pace, where factual precision is combined with subtle psychology.
This is prose of a high level: engaging as a genre piece and at the same time intellectually precise, raising questions that are important today as well.

1952, Helsinki.
Victory in the Great Patriotic War has redrawn the political map of the world. The USSR national team is taking to the Olympic arena for the first time.

Olga Pogodina-Kuzmina’s novella “Olympic Tower” interprets this landmark event in the form of a spy thriller. On its pages appear Nazis who escaped punishment and became part of Western intelligence services, Russian émigré collaborators, Finnish journalists, Soviet athletes who lived through the war and are ready to bring new victories to their country — a gallery of characters that forms a vivid portrait of a troubled era. The nonlinear, gripping intrigue, the war past that catches up with the heroes, and, of course, the love line intensify the effect: the cinematic presentation recalls the author’s screenwriting and dramaturgical experience. But Pogodina-Kuzmina expands the boundaries of the genre: this is prose of a high order — psychologically precise, restrained, subtle, and profound, звучащая особенно modernly.