Granting a voice to the dispossessed …

… 'The Little Red Chairs': Edna O'Brien brings the Beast of Bosnia ashore in Ireland | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

 Only the retired schoolteacher has his doubts and reminds the other pub denizens that Rasputin, too, was a charming foreigner who claimed to have the powers of a healer. Meanwhile, Ms. O’Brien implies that “Vlad” may be the scariest outsider of all, the one with bloody fangs.

Well, in Rasputin's case, he apparently did have some uncanny ability to ease the czarevich's suffering from hemophilia, and his advice to avoid Russian entry into World War I proved eminently sound.