I never compared the series with the books. It taught me that you can tell the same story in many ways. RS: My problem is, I’m spoiled by my education. H: Many Tolkienite fans were enraged when the first Lord of the Rings movie came out, religiously refusing to accept Peter Jackson’s liberties with the original story… How do the Game of Thrones series look to you, compared with George R.R. Years ago, a friend of mine – he’s a speaker here – had an ICQ name taken from there, and I kept wondering: I could tell it was from some book – but what book? Some of my colleagues here just started, and some have been reading and watching since it first came out. We, professional psychologists, historians, zoologists, anthropologists, ecologists are all fascinated by this continuum created by Martin, and by the amazing TV series… I’ve been into this for about seven years. And this is why we organized this conference. Martin, despite his lack of historical knowledge, his lack of education, knows how to tell stories. H: But obviously, at some point you changed your mind? I started reading them, and defined them as ‘books for the metro.’ Eventually, I stopped. RS: My Tolkienite friends recommended the ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ books to me. H: How did you come across ‘The Game of Thrones?’ I know some people who don’t have this base.
We had the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit in our library – my first fantasy books as a child. Roman Shliakhtin (RS): the main function of a historian is telling stories. Helen Borodina (H): What makes fantasy interesting to you as a serious professional historian?
Roman is presently preparing for his second postdoctoral project in Istanbul, Turkey, at the Centre for Byzantine and Late Antiques Studies at Koc University Good stories
His studies on Byzantium eventually led to him to Washington DC, where he finished his doctoral thesis in fellowship with The Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. Roman is a graduate of Moscow State University and he also graduated from the Department of medieval studies at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. Moscow born, Roman holds a PhD in history, is a journalist and world traveller. Interview by Helen Borodina, Photographs by Anastasia Mikheeva
The following is an interview with Roman Shliakhtin, the mastermind behind the Conference and its main organizer. But it was a full house, the coffee was hot, and the Q&A’s animated. The day when a group of Ph.D historians, psychologists, anthropologists, zoologists and ecologists called a conference on the Game of Thrones at the Bogolyubov library in the centre of Moscow, was cloudy and grey. “ Winter is Coming,” – says Jon Snow, and we feel it, too. A Game of Thrones Conference in MoscowĪ Game of Thrones Conference in Moscow’s Bogolyubov Library of Arts in Sushevskaya street
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