Michael Idov
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📚 THE COLLABORATORS out now from Scribner
📚 THE CORMORANT HUNT out Jan 27 2026
🎬 STRATAGEM filming 2026
📱 Work Qs: Rob Kenneally @ CAA
Articles by Michael Idov
The Collaborators - Michael Idov (Buch)
A brilliant young intelligence officer and a troubled heiress stumble into a global conspiracy that pits present-day Russia against the CIA in this electrifying, globetrotting spy thriller. Combining realistic thrills with sophisticated spycraft and witty dialogue, The Collaborators delivers a gut-punch answer to the biggest geopolitical question of our time. How exactly did post-Soviet Russia turn down the wrong path?
Die Top 10 Filme über Spione und Spionage
10 beste Spionagefilme des 21. Jahrhunderts Es sind harte Zeiten für Thrillerfans, die gerne sehen, wie Spione ihr Handwerk ausüben. Heutzutage werden die besten Spionagegeschichten im Streaming erzählt – ich denke da an solide Serien wie “Slow Horses”, “The Agency” oder “The Night Manager”. Auf der Kinoleinwand scheinen sich Geheimagenten heute vorwiegend an Ian Flemings ursprünglicher Charakterisierung von James Bond zu orientieren: Sie sind meist besonders gut darin, Dinge in die Luft zu jagen.
【GQ片單】影史最刺激「間諜電影」TOP 10：全片 iPhone 拍攝、情報員究竟在做什麼？除了《神鬼認證》這些也必看！
對於喜歡各種槍擊打鬥、飛簷走壁，又或者是開著帥氣超跑登場的「詹姆斯龐德」的間諜迷來說，這幾年確實不太好過，因為近期相當出色的間諜作品，往往不在大銀幕，而是在電視上，像是《外放特務組》（Slow Horses）、《CIA 倫敦辦公室》（The Agency）或《夜班經理》（The Night Manager）這類立基於現實的小螢幕作品，佔據了節目夜間時段，開啟馬拉松式播放。反觀真正登上電影裡的祕密特務，似乎也完全接受了原系列小說作者伊恩佛萊明（Ian Fleming）當年對「007」的原始定義：政府單位的出色「工具」，他們擅長的不再是情報，而是戲劇性、大場面的爆破。 但在現實中，一名成功間諜的「擊殺數」，理論上必須是零。真正至關重要的，是手上掌握多少敵方機密，甚至更嚴格來講，是取決於特務自身心理素質是否足夠強大。至於經典諜報驚悚片為何逐漸走向警探綁匪電影那樣的情節，是歷年觀眾緣下滑？還是現代混亂的地緣政治局勢？又或只是因為《神鬼認證》（The Bourne）系列編劇東尼吉洛伊（Tony Gilroy）正忙著籌備他下一部作品？原因或許難以歸結，但現況已然如此。...
21. Yüzyılın En İyi Casus Filmleri
Focus Features/Everett Collection Popüler Büyük perdede casusluk, ajanların girişecek bir Soğuk Savaş’ı olduğu dönemlerde zirve yapmış olabilir. Ama bu modern casus gerilimlerinde, klasik istihbarat oyunlarının ruhu hâlâ yaşıyor. 30 Ocak 2026 Casusların gerçekten casusluk yaptığı filmleri izlemeyi seven gerilim meraklıları için zamanlar biraz zor. Bugün en iyi casus hikâyelerinin çoğu aslında dizilerde karşımıza çıkıyor.
Las mejores películas de espías del siglo 21 que sí entienden el espionaje
Son tiempos duros para los fans del thriller que disfrutan ver a los espías practicar, bueno, el oficio del espionaje. Más que nunca, las mejores películas de espías en realidad son series de televisión: joyas de la pantalla chica, sobrias y aterrizadas, como Slow Horses —Caballos Lentos—, The Agency —La Agencia— o The Night Manager —El Infiltrado—.
The Best Spy Movies of the 21st Century
Jon Stewart goes scorched earth on Trump administration over ICE killing of Alex Pretti The "Daily Show" host has responded to the deadly shooting. Like Jimmy Kimmel and many of the other late night hosts, Jon Stewart's monologue on Monday was largely focused on ICE's deadly shooting of nurse Alex Pretti by a federal immigration officer in Minneapolis on Saturday. Over the course of 23 …
The Ten Best Spy Movies of the 21st Century
Times are tough for the thriller fan who likes to see spies practice, well, spycraft. More than ever, the best spy movies are actually TV shows—grounded small-screen gems like Slow Horses, The Agency, or The Night Manager. Meanwhile, secret agents at the movies seem to have taken to heart Ian Fleming's original characterization of James Bond as a "blunt instrument": they mostly excel at blowing stuff up. In reality, a successful spy's body count is, by definition, zero.
THE CORMORANT HUNT
Spy fiction at its headiest and most addictive. Despite embarrassing the CIA by exposing a high-ranking agent’s efforts to rig the 1996 Russian elections and murder people to keep the operation a secret, field agent Ari Falk is drafted for a sensitive undercover job in this standalone sequel to The Collaborators (2024).
5 Spy Thrillers That Are Also Good Literature
Staff who forgot to lock Swedish library surprised by behavior of 400 people who visited during holiday A simple error on the library's part could have cost them a lot but the people of Gothenburg showed what it meant to spread goodness. An act of …
5 Spy Thrillers That Are Also Good Literature
Let’s be frank: being a spy-thriller aficionado means occasionally having to put up with bad writing for the sake of a good plot. Not every former intelligence officer wields a sentence like John le Carré. Hell, few writers do, and that’s okay. If you, like me, gravitate toward the genre’s “grounded” end, where the politics are real and the escapades real-ish, authenticity will always outweigh style. Article continues after advertisement Of course, all of us have our red lines.
November 15, 2025 - Air Mail
Graydon Carter and Alessandra Stanley Ashley Baker Ash Carter Elena Clavarino George Pendle Carolina de Armas Jeanne Malle Paulina Prosnitz Dana Brown Cazzie David Lisa Henricksson Walter Isaacson Pico Iyer Rachel Johnson John Lahr Jonathan Margolis Linda Wells James Wolcott Lili Anolik Johanna Berkman Joseph Bullmore Spike Carter Vassi Chamberlain William D.
A History of the Nuremberg Trials in Film
The courtroom is a godsend to the movies. The stakes are life and death, the setting fits neatly on a soundstage, and the twists and turns are baked in: every successful trial is, by definition, a well-scripted play.
Opinion | Would You Believe This Spy’s Name?
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load. Would You Believe This Spy’s Name? Video CreditCredit...James Kerr / Scorpion Dagger Mr. Idov is the author, most recently, of the spy thriller “The Collaborators.” There’s no shortage of spy content right now.
Trump Just Scrapped My Anti-Kremlin Streaming Platform, Votvot Original
The Trump administration's decision to take a hammer to the funding for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty might be legally dubious, but politically pretty safe: Its programming wasn't intended to reach American audiences, so who would miss it, really?
Inside Bar Electrolite, an R.E.M.-Themed Bar Near Brussels
Being an R.E.M. fan is like being orphaned in the nicest way possible. The band’s members are alive and well and still friendly with each other, but since its breakup, in 2011—in what must rank as the most amicable dissolution in the history of rock—a full-scale reunion has never been on the table. Nature, however, abhors a vacuum, and the band’s devotees have had some unexpected options lately.
Opinion | I Loved ‘Anora,’ but I Still Hope It Loses at the Oscars
On the other hand, since the start of the war, hundreds if not thousands of other Russian film and theater actors have found the courage to speak out against President Vladimir Putin of Russia and left the country. Given how tightly the acting profession is tied to one’s command of the language, for most of them the move meant sacrificing their careers in the name of principle. A select few have found occasional employment in the West.
'Anora''s Oscar Nominations Have Become Russian Propaganda
"Anora" is my favorite film of 2024. It's brutal, hilarious, alive with a wild kinetic energy that feels like the essence of cinema itself. It's up for six Oscars, including Best Picture, and deservedly so. While most Hollywood movies don't care enough about Eastern European characters to even get the names right, the film's director, Sean Baker, went to the trouble of filling it with authentic native dialogue and casting actual Russian celebrity actors.
Writing a Spy Novel in an Age of Geopolitical Chaos
Back in 2022, when I sat down to write my first spy thriller, The Collaborators, I knew two mutually exclusive things: that I wanted it to be as modern and realistic as possible; and that I wouldn’t be able to set it in the present. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I reckoned, had upended the world order to such an extent that any attempt to capture the global “now” would be outdated in a month. Little did I know. Reading a good spy novel should be not unlike solving a chess problem.
License to Thrill: The Real and the Unreal in Spy Fiction
10 hours ago Jordan Peterson’s prophecies The Canadian thinker’s self-made deity is a symptom of the modern Western malady. At the end of We Who Wrestle with God, Jordan Peterson tells the … 18 hours ago The Book of the New Sun Series The Book of the New Sun is a series by American novelist Gene Wolfe (1931-2019).
License to Thrill: The Real and the Unreal in Spy Fiction
Spy thrillers don’t get closer to real-world spycraft than the 1968 Soviet film Dead Season. Written under nearly literal dictation from the KGB, it’s based on true exploits — or at least the Lubyanka-approved version — of an intelligence officer named Konon Molody, who had spent years in the West posing as a Canadian businessman.
THE COLLABORATORS
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006). A zombie apocalypse is one thing.
Intrigue in the Age of Information: 'The Collaborators' Redefines Covert Action
BOOK REVIEW: The Collaborators By Michael Idov / Scribner Reviewed by: Anne and Jay Gruner The Reviewers – Anne and Jay Gruner were career CIA officers in analysis and operations, respectively. Anne, formerly Deputy Director of WINPAC, is a Pushcart-nominated writer whose fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and book reviews have appeared in over 20 print and on-line publications, including The Cipher Brief.
The Collaborators
Slow Horses meets Red Sparrow in this “sharp, freshly conceived, [and] thoroughly entertaining” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) spy thriller featuring a brilliant young intelligence officer and a troubled heiress who stumble into a global conspiracy that pits present-day Russia against the CIA.
The December 2024 Indie Next List Preview
Nov 06 2024 The December 2024 Indie Next List Preview Printer-friendly version Here are the 25 Indie Next List and 6 Now in Paperback picks on the December 2024 Indie Next List flier. The December title list is also viewable as a collection on Edelweiss and on the Indie Next List page as an Excel file alongside PDFs for the month’s flier and shelf-talker templates. Learn more and visit Matchbook Marketing’s program page to sign up to send the free Indie Next List e-newsletter to customers.
September 15, 2024
]Mary L. Trump, niece of Donald Trump, delivers another heartrending account with Who Could Ever Love You: A Family Memoir.
The 2024 Indie Gift Guide For Genre Lovers Preview
Aug 21 2024 The 2024 Indie Gift Guide For Genre Lovers Preview Printer-friendly version The American Booksellers Association’s Indie Gift Guide for Genre Lovers will be available both in print and as a free e-newsletter delivered to customers by email via Matchbook Marketing. Print editions of the guide will be included in the September box mailings. On October 17, the e-newsletter will be sent to customers of stores that have signed up to send the Indie Next for Reading Groups lists.
In Athens With Michael Shannon, the Night He (Sort of) Reunited R.E.M. Original
This story was featured in The Must Read, a newsletter in which our editors recommend one can’t-miss GQ story every weekday. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. Radio Free Europe Every R.E.M. fan has a version of this story. Mine is set in Riga, Latvia, in early 1991. I am 14. There are barricades in the city center: A few weeks earlier, Moscow tried to bring my newly independent country to heel by force. There is also, not unrelatedly, CNN International on TV.
This Week's 20% Off Featured New Releases
Skip to main content We sift through hundreds of books being published each week to select eight of what we think are the most intriguing, discounted 20%. Books are discounted for two weeks, so there are sixteen discounted new releases featured all the time.
A Selective Survey of Russians in New York -- New York Magazine
Emma Goldman Arrived 1885 America’s most famous anarchist. Born in Lithuania, deported in the midst of the revolution. Al Jolson (né Asa Yoelson) 1894 A pioneer in Jewish entertainment, not so much in racial sensitivity. Irving Berlin (né Israel Baline) 1893 The son of a cantor had one memory of his Russian toddlerhood: watching his house burn down in a pogrom. Sholem Aleichem (né Rabinowitz) 1905 Yiddish writer behind Fiddler on the Roof.
Russian Creatives Are Fleeing. For Actors, It's Not So Simple
The main character of Mephisto, the Oscar-winning film based on a 1936 novel by Klaus Mann, is a brilliant theater actor who thinks he can outsmart the Nazis by collaborating with them. By the film’s end, he is left hysterically screaming, “Ich bin doch nur ein Schauspieler!”—“but I am only an actor!”—as Hitler’s repression machine comes for him, too.
Behind the Scenes of Volodymyr Zelensky's Rise from Rom-Com Star to Ukraine President
A rare bright spot amid the nightmare Putin’s Russia unleashed on the world last week has been the steady, fearless, and subtly wry leadership of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Le parcours improbable de l'héroïque président ukrainien Volodymir Zelensky
Ces derniers jours, le président ukrainien a pris la parole à trois reprises, à chaque fois de façon décisive. Il a prononcé son premier discours à la veille du conflit, en s’adressant à nouveau en russe, pour les Russes. “On vous a dit que j’allais bombarder le Donbass, a-t-il lancé, en réponse aux justifications de l’attaque invoquées par le Kremlin. Bombarder quoi ? Le stade où je suis allé soutenir mon équipe avec les locaux pendant l’Euro 2012 ?
Discussing The Worst Person in the World, listening to The Trojan Horse Affair, and breaking down Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s cultural cachet.
Slate’s Culture Gabfest on The Worst Person in the World, The Trojan Horse Affair, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s cultural cachet. Get Your Slate Plus Podcast If you can't access your feeds, please contact customer support. Thanks! Check your phone for a link to finish setting up your feed. Please enter a 10-digit phone number. Listen on your phone:RECOMMENDED Enter your phone number and we'll text you a link to set up the podcast in your app: We'll only text you about setting up this podcast, no spam.
ウクライナの大統領になったコメディアン。ウォロディミル・ゼレンスキーはどのようにして“物語”を支配したか？
ウォロディミル・ゼレンスキーは、世界で最も“ありえない”国家指導者であると同時に、世界で最も人気のある指導者かもしれない。大統領を演じて有名になったコメディアンが本当に大統領になり、それを超越する、という彼のシュールな人生模様は、筆者がこの記事を書いている2022年2月最後の週末の時点では、もう誰もが知っている。 映画『パディントン2』のウクライナ版でパディントンベアの声を務めた彼は、12本のコメディと1本の映画に出演した人物である。ゼレンスキーは、2019年、当時のトランプ大統領から、ウクライナへの軍事支援などと引き換えに、バイデン氏に絡む疑惑の調査を依頼されたという。これが「権力の乱用」にあたるとされ、トランプ氏は弾劾訴追を受けることにもなった。そしてゼレンスキーは今、包囲された首都・キエフの街角で、プーチンと対峙している。...
Volodymyr Zelensky: cómo enfrenta la guerra entre Rusia y Ucrania
Mientras escribo esto, Volodymyr Zelensky, el líder nacional más improbable del mundo, podría ser el más popular del globo. A estas alturas, todos conocen el esquema surrealista de su vida: un comediante que saltó a la fama con una interpretación de un presidente se convierte en el auténtico líder de Ucrania, y luego simplemente trascendió. ¿Quién es Volodymyr Zelensky?
“Language Is Never the Enemy”: Why I Will Not Write in Russian as Long as Putin Is in Power
There are maybe two or three screenwriters in Hollywood who can switch between English and Russian at will, and I am one of them. This is not a self-aggrandizing statement—no evidence suggests I’m a genius in either. Still, I have been writing for a living for 30 years, since the age of 15, when a daily newspaper rather bewilderingly printed a sci-fi short story of mine.
The Improbable Rise and Endless Heroism of Volodymyr Zelensky
As I write this, Volodymyr Zelensky, the most improbable national leader in the world, just might be the world’s most popular. By now everyone knows his life story’s surreal outline: a comedian who rose to fame with a portrayal of a president becomes the real thing, then transcends it.
Placebo: Sleeping with Ghosts
Last I checked, our puritanical country had yet to accept naked asses on CD covers: a glimpse of anything more than the proverbial carpenter's smile guaranteed the album an airbrushed Stateside reissue, a paper baggie, or a strategically applied sticker. Yet Placebo's latest gets away with an unobstructed view of female hindquarters, and I think I know why: see, the chick's dead. She's a ghost. You can see right through that ass! Sorry, I'm just fascinated by the logic of it.
The Novel that Predicts Russia’s Invasion of Crimea
“Who wouldn’t recognize, amid the crazed architectural flourishes of Downtown Simferopol, the assertive skyscraping simplicity of the pencil-like home of the Russian Courier.” Thus begins one of my favorite novels of the twentieth century. The same novel ends with Russia annexing Crimea after its citizens are snookered into requesting the invasion themselves: in other words, it eerily anticipates this week’s news.
The Humorist (2019) - IMDb
After watching the Dude's interview with Idowym (Director/writer) many things fell into place. And the atmosphere Of Soviet Jurmala 1984 and posters (Space Odyssey 2001) in the room of the son of the protagonist, and the allusion to Rome in the bath/sauna of the one who died of a heart attack when joked about his wife. and about the story/joke like "damn sawing the wing of the plane" in retroshare with the beach in the beginning of the film.
Fall 2019 | Filmmaker Magazine
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He Re-Shoots, He Scores – Air Mail
He Re-Shoots, He Scores Russian filmmakers splice sports history to play along with Putin When the mini-series Chernobyl premiered on HBO, its historical rigor and verve elicited a collective sigh from a better part of the Russian film world: This should have been us. We should have made this. The surge of admiring envy was so total that it seemed certain to bear fruit—some of it inevitably radioactive.
Michael Idov Talks to Alexander Ovechkin
If Alexander Ovechkin's first name is perfect—"the Great" attaches easily enough—his last name couldn't be more ironic if Alanis Morissette wrote a song about it. It means "little lamb." Little, I repeat, lamb. Not only little, but a female one. In Russian, an ovechka is a girl lamb. The man himself looks more like Jaws, the henchman from the Bond films, with a touch of Jaws the shark.
Clash of the Bearded Ones
On a windy Monday night, Pete’s Candy Store—a bar in Williamsburg with a railcar-shaped performance space in the back—is crammed to capacity with the thin and the bearded. Almost no one is drinking. The mood is pregame, expectant and nervous. We’re at one of the oddest New York City powwows in recent memory: a panel designed to quell a metastasizing dispute between bicyclists and Hasidic Jews. Except no Hasids are present. For a moment, it looks like the bicyclists will have to debate themselves.
Russia's Hip-Hop Underground
Concert in the club Moscow. Musican Pasha Technic. Last summer at Moscow’s Flacon, a former Soviet crystal factory converted into a hub of hipster retail and media, a man stood on a rickety ladder painting three huge Xs on a side of a building. A dozen more young men and women lounged around with beers and stale pizza.
New York Magazine
(Photo: Courtesy of Brooklyn Brewery) BAR: Lower East Side Rent $6,000 a month for 700 square feet. Construction and Licenses $75,000, including $4,500 for a two-year liquor license and a $5,000 attorney’s fee. If it’s not already a bar, keg machinery and refrigeration will cost thousands. Staffing and Insurance $13,000 a month for two bartenders, an off-the-books bar back, and basic liability insurance for the business.
Putin’s Opponents Faced a Choice Between Two Desperate Strategies. Neither One Worked.
Alexei Navalny and Ksenia Sobchak. Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images, Maxim Zmeyev/AFP/Getty Images and Gajmar/Wikipedia. Is it worth voting in an election when the outcome has been predetermined? Russians opposed to Vladimir Putin’s reign already had several occasions to ponder this before Sunday’s presidential vote.
Rubbing elbows with Pussy Riot and the 'hip' Putin elite | Books | DW | 28.02.2018
In "Dressed Up for a Riot: Misadventures in Putin's Moscow," Michael Idov recounts his wildly hilarious stint working as the editor-in-chief of GQ Russia from 2012 to 2014. It could easily pass for a satire on the Russian capital, but his daily experiences there also provide insight into the anti-Putin movement of the 2010s — he befriended for instance the members of Pussy Riot, only to be later disillusioned by the divided opposition movement, and briefly embraced the Putin elite instead.
Opinion | On Trial, Putin v. Pussy Riot
Gender equality and the rights of ethnic minorities and gays all remain firmly outside of its scope. Indeed, outward Westernization easily coexists with attitudes that could be charitably called conservative: just last week, the owner of a new American-themed, artisanal-popsicle-serving cafe was quoted saying in a promotional interview: “This is a family place. ...
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