Christian Salmon a fondé et animé, de 1993 à 2003, le Parlement international des écrivains. Il est l’auteur de plusieurs ouvrages, dont Tombeau de la fiction (Denoël, 1999), Devenir minoritaire. Pour une politique de la littérature, entretiens avec Joseph Hanimann (Denoël, 2003), Verbicide (Actes Sud, 2007).
Over 30 years ago, Christian Salmon abandoned his project to write a biography about a forgotten legend of the Russian Revolution: Yakov Blumkin, a terrorist, member of Cheka, poet, military strategist and secret agent, who was executed, aged 29, on the orders of Stalin.
Years went by until, when moving house, the author discovered a trunk containing the archives of the Blumkin Project. It contained manuscripts, documents, rare photographs and personal souvenirs. He realized that since the end of the USSR Russian Internet users have been using Blumkin as a pseudonym and that rumors and falsehoods about this legendary character continue to abound.
This prompted him to take up writing the biography again.
Yakov Blumkin claimed to have had nine lives. He was the assassin of the German ambassador, a poet close to the avant-garde, Trotsky’s secretary and an essential strategic asset on a variety of occasions and latitudes. A new account was required to follow as closely as possible this historic, decisive but ghostly figure’s travels.
An unusual journey in the footsteps of a forgotten legend of the Russian Revolution.
Christian Salmon founded the International Parliament of Writers which he headed from 1993 to 2003. He is the author of Tom beau de la fiction (Denel, 1999), Kate Moss Machine (La Découverte, 2010) ( translation: Kate Moss: The Making of an Icon– Harper Collins), La Cérémonie Cannibale (Fayard 2013). His essay, Storytelling la machine à raconter des histoires et à formater les esprits (La Découverte 2007) translated into a dozen languages including English (Storytelling: Bewitching the Modern Mind– Verso).