For many Russia is an enigma, but for author, translator Peter D Campbell, understanding Russia became a challenge he wanted to crack. The 31 year old Australian-New Zealand journalist has spent over five years living in Russia – first visiting Russia when he was 19 years old back in 2002.
The author has recently published a number of books which have been inspired by this contradictory and challenging country. Peter’s main work In My Brother’s Shadow explores the complexity of a fraternal relationship and creates a story of rising tension and violence. The author’s experience of Russia, Bosnia and Serbia provide the insight and veracity of the novel, but it is Peter’s originality that extends a story of personal loss and war-crimes into a work that explores the consequences of tragic choices forced on an individual by circumstance and the pressures of society.
In this novel Peter attempts to look into the dark depths of Russian society to reveal the humanity and the brutality which makes Russia a land of such stark contrasts. Comments on his book reveal how effectively the author manages to explore these ideas:
“I found this be a very profound and thought provoking novel. I normally read a novel cover to cover in a day or two but found myself laying it down and coming back to it due to the intensity. I chose it because of identifying with the hero worship of an older brother, but found it much darker than anticipated. I may end up re-reading it in the future,” wrote PJ Fritsche
While others have been even more lavish in their praise Cheryl Amazeen on Goodreads described the novel in glowing terms:
“For the first time in years a true example of Literature! Campbell should be forever proud of this work, a rose among dandelions. This novel should be read and taught in colleges all over the world.”
A statement echoed in another Goodreads review:
“One of the greatest books I’ve ever read! Definitely worth reading again in a few months, and I’ll probably still be thinking about it in a few months’ time.”
To research In My Brother’s Shadow Peter travelled to the Balkans where he visited key locations for his novel, including Srebrenica. He also interviewed veterans from Russia’s wars in the Chechnya and murderers. An additional level of authenticity has been added to the novel by the author surviving two serious assaults in Russia and a home invasion.
Peter has a knack of finding himself in unusual places in unusual times. He was living in Fiji at the time of the 2006 military coup and was living in Christchurch for the 2011 earthquake which killed 185 people, including a number of his former colleagues and students.
While Peter’s works include novellas and translations, he has also written a book on language acquisition which brings together several years of research and his own experience learning three foreign languages and teaching English as a second language. Language Learning Secrets Revealed discusses various techniques to help students learn foreign languages quickly and effectively.
“There is a lot of research out there about how people learn and what you need to do to learn foreign languages quickly and well. Unfortunately, most language courses do not teach these skills so it is a matter of luck whether a student stumbles across them or not. Consequently, success in learning foreign languages often becomes a matter of persistence and luck. This book is designed to teach people how to learn languages and is something I wish I had read 15 years ago,” said the writer.
Peter D Campbell was born in Australia and grew up in New Zealand. By the time he was nine he had attended four schools when regular schooling ceased because of persistent ill-health. Correspondence School lessons and voracious reading provided his education until at the age of 16 he entered the University of Canterbury where he majored in Classics and Russian, with courses in Political Science. He graduated with first class honours in Russian, which won him a scholarship to St Petersburg State University where he undertook higher studies in language, literature, history and philosophy, and became a professional translator. During four years in Russia he also sampled the volatility, compassion, sentimentality and violence of modern Russian society, and travelled widely through Southern and Eastern Europe.
Peter has been interested in writing from an early age, wrote his first novel at the age of 14, and made story writing a habit. His experiences in Russia, and Bosnia gave him the inspiration for his major novel, In His Brother’s Shadow which explores the tragic choices forced on an individual by the forces of history and the pressures of society.
Peter’s quest to understand the human condition led him also to become a qualified master practitioner of neurolinguistic programming therapy (NLP), and to become a qualified journalist.
At present he lives in St Petersburg, the setting for his series of novellas about an expatriate detective, and also the home of the Russian iconic author Alexander Pushkin. The Russian author has been a model for Peter’s writing and the young author has translated two of Pushkin’s short stories which are now available at Amazon.com.