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Odyssey Moscow by Michael Calvey
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Odyssey Moscow

One American’s Journey from Russian Optimist to Prisoner of the State

$24.10

Available for pre-order
April 22, 2025

Length 8 hours 55 minutes
Language English
Narrators Michael Calvey & Arthur Morey

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It is dawn on Thursday, 14 February 2019, and armed FSB agents are raiding Michael Calvey’s Moscow apartment.

He is being arrested for a crime that never happened.

Twenty-eight years earlier, Calvey—a newly graduated, aspiring Wall Street hotshot—made a short trip from America to the recently collapsed USSR to look at potential investments. Sensing huge opportunity, he soon based himself in Moscow, where he lived through the “Wild East” years and went on to build several billion-dollar funds—earning enormous returns for Western investors as Russia opened up to international business. He gained a reputation that would lead to Bloomberg describing him as “a legend in the Russian market, with a reputed aversion to any kind of foul play.”

But now, he finds himself thrown into Moscow’s notorious Matrosskaya Tishina prison on charges trumped up by local business rivals. As the White House and Kremlin argue about his incarceration, Calvey is caught in a Kafka-esque trap, denied access to evidence proving his innocence.

Odyssey Moscow is the story not just of Michael Calvey, but of how Russia’s era of hope and aspiration finally died, and how light can be found in the darkest of places.

Michael Calvey was a Founder and Co-Senior Partner of Baring Vostok, a private equity firm recognized for its early investments in numerous highly successful companies. Living in Moscow for almost three decades, he learned the language, married a Russian woman, and forged an unmatched network of contacts. Today, he is Chairman of Baring Ventures, which sold all its Russian assets after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and now focuses on other international markets. He is a US citizen living in Switzerland and the UK.

Michael Calvey was a Founder and Co-Senior Partner of Baring Vostok, a private equity firm recognized for its early investments in numerous highly successful companies. Living in Moscow for almost three decades, he learned the language, married a Russian woman, and forged an unmatched network of contacts. Today, he is Chairman of Baring Ventures, which sold all its Russian assets after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and now focuses on other international markets. He is a US citizen living in Switzerland and the UK.

Arthur Morey has won three AudioFile Magazine “Best Of” Awards, and his work has garnered numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and placed him as a finalist for two Audie Awards. He has acted in a number of productions, both off Broadway in New York and off Loop in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard and did graduate work at the University of Chicago. He has won awards for his fiction and drama, worked as an editor with several book publishers, and taught literature and writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed.

Audiobook details

Author:

ISBN:
9798228496835

Length:
8 hours 55 minutes

Language:
English

Publisher:
Blackstone Publishing

Publication date:

Edition:
Unabridged

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Reviews

“A riveting tale of betrayal and lawlessness by the Russian Government, told by the most successful US investor in Russia. Calvey narrates an incredible story of creating a thriving business in Russia and with Russians over decades that is laid waste by the Kremlin. His harrowing experience in recent years—an innocent man caught and punished in the Russian criminal justice system—is told with clinical and chilling detail.”

“I have known Michael for over twenty-five years, and I never met any other foreigner who appreciates the Russian spirit, perhaps even more than I do! Baring was the smartest, most reputable, and successful investor in Russia. That’s why his arrest and punishment were shocking to me and the entire business elite—it was so unfair and insane. We tried to help Mike as much as we could, but there’s not much you can do in Russia against the KGB. But he held up very well! Mike is a true hero.”

“From pioneering investor to financial titan to jail-time in Moscow’s most notorious prison—Mike Calvey has ventured deep inside the Russian enigma. He knows more about post-Communist Russia, good and bad, than almost any other Westerner on earth…One of the world’s most astute and successful asset managers, he’s a superb writer too, with an astonishing tale to tell.”

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