I Was a Potato Oligarch: Travels and Travails in the New Russia | 
 enlarge | Author: John Mole
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
Buy New: $11.22
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 602242
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.3 x 1
ISBN: 1857885090
Dewey Decimal Number: 338.040947
EAN: 9781857885095
ASIN: 1857885090
Publication Date: August 25, 2008
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Product Description
A wild tale of life and business in the new Russia. John Mole went to seek his fortune in the New Russia. His Big Idea was to set up baked potato restaurants to rival McDonald's and Pizza Hut. He came back with the rights for revolutionary biotechnology for cleaning up air pollution. In between he tangled with fantasists, Stalinists, Tolkeinists, corrupt bureaucrats, hopeful oligarchs and hopeless biznismyen, muggers, the mafia and ordinary Russians just struggling to survive.
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| Customer Reviews:
A modern fable October 17, 2008
As a rule, I do not review books which replace their capital R's with Russian Ya's. I find it to be a rather reliable predictor (along with, say,matryoshkas) that hokiness lies between the covers.
Thankfully, I forgot that rule for a moment and picked up John Mole's memoir of his years working to set up
a fast food chain in Russia. Laced with a refreshingly dry and self-deprecating wit, it is chock full of the sort of odd characters and unbelievable events that make a story worth telling.
Mole mostly keeps the story from getting too personal, and his relaxed style becomes welcoming, once it grows on you. Admittedly, there is too much "proverb-dropping," as well as several forced attempts to wittily encapsulate cultural differences. But this is offset by Mole's willingness to disclose the fullness of his naivete.
In the end, when he sticks to his principals and chucks the whole project rather than make a Faustian deal, he is rewarded from an unexpected quarter, tying the story up in almost fabular fashion, reminding that success usually comes through a mixture of bull-headed persistence and cosmic luck. (Reviewed in Russian Life)
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