To See Ourselves as Others See Us

When a review copy of Konstantin Kisin’s An Immigrant’s Love Letter to the West landed on my doormat late last year, Kisin was one half (with Francis Foster) of a popular but geographically constrained chat-show, Triggernometry, and very much a neophyte writer. Love Letter is his first book. Since then—in a process that unfolded while I was reading it, which itself was a discombobulating experience for this humble book hack—Kisin has become a global phenomenon, having delivered a speech to the Oxford Union now viewed tens of millions of times on YouTube, various news channels, and elsewhere. Already a British bestseller, Americans have been forced to order Love Letter hardcopies from UK bookchains and British Amazon unless willing to wait until July this year, when it has its US release.