Anne Applebaum’s books of the year

Snowdrops, A. D. Miller’s literary thriller, has to qualify as the book I was ‘most unable to put down’ this year. It’s set in a contemporary Moscow which I instantly recognised — glamorous, vicious, amoral and terrifying all at once. Miller puts his finger right on what makes modern Russia so compelling to outsiders. When his main character, a bland Englishman, allows himself to be enticed into a scam involving beautiful girls, phony building permits, and enormous amounts of money we intuitively understand why.

For those who prefer their scams closer to home, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Michael Lewis’s book on the 2008 sub-prime mortgage crash is a brilliant read, and highly educational. I confess that I really didn’t understand how the Lehman Brothers’ crash happened until I read Lewis’s explanation. Besides, he has a novelist’s gift for evoking the weird world of money management, of people who sit in dark rooms and play with vast sums of money on their computers.