'A daring and mesmerizing twist on the art of biography' - Douglas
Smith, author of Rasputin: The Biography
'Anyone who loves [Dostoevsky's] novels will be fascinated by this
book' - Sue Prideaux, author of I Am Dynamite! A Life of
Friedrich Nietzsche
Dostoevsky's life was marked by brilliance and brutality. Sentenced to
death as a young revolutionary, he survived mock execution and Siberian
exile to live through a time of seismic change in Russia, eventually
being accepted into the Tsar's inner circle. He had three great love
affairs, each overshadowed by debilitating epilepsy and addiction to
gambling. Somehow, amidst all this, he found time to write short
stories, journalism and novels such as Crime and Punishment, The
Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, works now recognised as among the
finest ever written.
In Dostoevsky in Love Alex Christofi weaves carefully chosen excerpts
of the author's work with the historical context to form an illuminating
and often surprising whole. The result is a novelistic life that
immerses the reader in a grand vista of Dostoevsky's world: from the
Siberian prison camp to the gambling halls of Europe; from the dank
prison cells of the Tsar's fortress to the refined salons of St
Petersburg. Along the way, Christofi relates the stories of the three
women whose lives were so deeply intertwined with Dostoevsky's: the
consumptive widow Maria; the impetuous Polina who had visions of
assassinating the Tsar; and the faithful stenographer Anna, who did so
much to secure his literary legacy.
Reading between the lines of his fiction, Christofi reconstructs the
memoir Dostoevsky might have written had life - and literary stardom -
not intervened. He gives us a new portrait of the artist as never before
seen: a shy but devoted lover, an empathetic friend of the people, a
loyal brother and friend, and a writer able to penetrate to the very
depths of the human soul.
