The Politics of Fantasy: Magic, Children's Literature, and Fandom in Putin's Russia

What happened when J. K. Rowling's mega-blockbuster-born in the United Kingdom and launched to global heights by Hollywood and the full force of Western marketing-came knocking on President Putin's door? The arrival of boy wizard and international star Harry Potter in a recently neoliberal Russia was enormously influential, but neither smooth nor uncontested. The franchise quickly became a lens that focused Russian ambitions and fears during an era characterized by both the hegemony of glob...