Australian author Malcolm Knox is nothing if not daring, and The First Friend is dramatically audacious, tackling as it does one of the evildoers of the Twentieth Century, Stalin’s secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria. Knox uses the time-honored device of narrating The First Friend through the eyes of Beria’s fictional childhood friend, Vasil Murtov. Set in 1938, just before Beria’s ascendancy to the near top of Stalin’s pyramid, it follows Murtov as he ferries Beria around and provides a foil for the megalomaniac sadist’s ego, all the while desperate to protect his family. The plot hinges on a proposed grand Black Sea visit by the dictator and the reader knows from the start that all will go wrong and blood will flow. Savagely satirical and laced with wit so sharp one shifts from laughter to horror and back, the novel is, as such satires tend to be, full of wordy dialogue and readily identifiable as an outsider’s spoof, so it only barely renders Murtov’s fate as tragic. I think the novel’s closest relative is Armando Iannucci’s 2017 satirical film The Death of Stalin. Viewed as such, and especially if you know little about Stalin’s horrific reign, The First Friend is a crackling, adventurous riot.
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