Owen Matthews is a British writer, historian and journalist. His first book, Stalin's Children, was shortlisted for the 2008 Guardian First Books Award, the Orwell Prize for political writing, and France's Prix Medicis Etranger. His books have been translated into 28 languages. He is a former Moscow and Istanbul Bureau Chief for Newsweek Magazine.
During the Bosnian War, Matthews worked as a foreign correspondent in Budapest, Sarajevo and Belgrade. From 1995–7 he worked as a reporter on The Moscow Times. In 1997 he joined Newsweek Magazine's Moscow Bureau as a correspondent, covering the Second Chechen war. In 2001 he moved to Turkey, reporting from Turkey, the Caucasus, Syria and Iran, and also covering the invasions of Afghanistan and then Iraq. From 2006 to 2012 he was Newsweek's Moscow Bureau Chief; he is now a Contributing Editor at the magazine. In 2014 he reported for Newsweek on the conflict in Eastern Ukraine.
Books
Stalin's Children: Three Generations of Love and War, a memoir of three generations of Matthews' family in Russia, was named as a Book of the Year by The Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph.
Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of Russian America, a history of Imperial Russia's doomed attempt to colonise America, was shortlisted for the 2014 Pushkin House Prize for books on Russia.
Moscou Babylone, a novel based on Matthews' experiences in Moscow in the 1990s, has been published in French, German and Czech. It was chosen as the 'coup de coeur etranger' at the 2013 Nancy Literary Festival, Le Livre sur la Place.
Thinking with the Blood, a personal reportage based on a journey across war-torn Ukraine in the late summer of 2014, was published as an ebook.
L'Ombre du Sabre A novel inspired by the author's own experiences as a reporter in Chechnya in the 1990s and in Eastern Ukraine in 2014
An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin's Master Agent A biography of German Communist spy Richard Sorge, the first English language work written with extensive access to the Soviet archives. Chosen as a Book of the Year by The Economist magazine: "A tragic, heroic story, magnificently told with an understated rage."
Black Sun, Based on real events—the bid by Andrei Sakharov to develop a bomb to end all bombs—this story is set in a secret Soviet city in 1961. Featuring murder and betrayals, and a flawed but principled KGB man as its hero, it unfolds in the aftermath of Stalinism, amid the scars left by the purges, denunciations and Great Patriotic War. Chosen as a Book of the Year by The Economist ; a Crime Book of the Month in The Sunday Times ; and one of the Financial Times' Best Thrillers of 2019.
Art
In 2013 Matthews had his first solo art show, "Impact" at the in Paris. The installation centred on an impacted 9mm pistol round which Matthews picked up from a pavement in Baghdad, Iraq, next to the body of a man whom it had killed.
Television
Matthews co-wrote the 2015 Russian television series Londongrad and played an episodic role in it. Matthews also played the US Ambassador to Moscow in the 2017 Russian television series The Optimists. From 2016-18 Matthews appeared regularly as a guest on Russian political talk shows 60 Minut ; NTV's Mesto Vstrechi and Rossiya 1's Evening with Vladimir Solovyev. Hw was known for outspoken criticism of the Kremlin and his clashes with senior Russian politicians, including Vladimir Zhironovsky.
