The Sinner and the Saint

Dostoevsky, a Crime and Its Punishment

The Sinner and the Saint
Kevin Birmingham
RRP:
NZ$ 65.00
Our Price:
NZ$ 52.00
Hardback
h240 x 156mm - 432pg
11 Nov 2021 UK
International import eta 7-19 days
9780241235942
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
From the acclaimed author of The Most Dangerous Book, the true story behind the creation of another masterpiece of world literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky' s Crime and Punishment As a young man, Dostoevsky was a celebrated writer, but his involvement with the radical politics of his day condemned him to a long Siberian exile. There, he spent years studying the criminals that were his companions. Upon his return to St Petersburg in the 1860s, he fought his way through gambling addiction, debilitating debt, epilepsy, the deaths of those closest to him and literary banishment to craft an enduring classic. The germ of Crime and Punishment came from the sensational story of Pierre Fran ois Lacenaire, a notorious murderer who charmed and outraged Paris in the 1830s. Lacenaire was a glamorous egoist who embodied the instincts that lie beneath nihilism, a western-influenced philosophy inspiring a new generation of Russian revolutionaries. Dostoevsky began creating a Russian incarnation of Lacenaire, a character who could demonstrate the errors of radical politics and ideas. His name would be Raskolnikov. Lacenaire shaped Raskolnikov in profound ways, but the deeper insight, as Birmingham shows, is that Raskolnikov began to merge with Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky was determined to tell a murder story from the murderer' s perspective, but his character couldn' t be a monster. No. The murderer would be chilling because he wants so desperately to be good. Dostoevsky' s great subject was self-consciousness, and Crime and Punishment advanced a revolution in artistic thinking. It also began the greatest phase of Dostoevsky' s career. The Sinner and the Saint now gives us the thrilling and definitive story of that triumph.
A page turner about turning pages, The Sinner and the Saint: Dostoevsky and the Gentleman Murderer Who Inspired A Masterpiece not only brings us back into the fevered panic of Raskolnikov as he murders an old woman, his motives a mystery even to his own sputtering mind, but also to real-life characters, most vividly a Parisian dandy (we might now call him ' gay' ), whose nihilism and thrill killings set Dostoevsky' s imagination ticking. Compulsively readable, tautly drawn, and richly researched, here is the brilliant study Dostoevsky and his staggering Crime and Punishment-filled, we now find, with intimations of him-so deserves -- Brad Gooch, New York Times Bestselling author of Flannery: A Life of Flannery O' Connor Dostoevsky didn' t have any choice about misery-the Siberian exile and the epilepsy, the despair and debts and the deaths of those he loved. All that just fell upon him, and none of us would want to be him, not even for the sake of those books. But wanting to know what it was like to be him-well, that' s different, and I can' t imagine a better guide than Kevin Birmingham. Dostoevsky was both sinner and saint, and this wonderfully pungent book presents his extraordinary life in the most vivid detail imaginable. Birmingham puts you in the room when Raskolnikov brings down the axe; and he puts you there too when the novelist discovers the face of redemptive love. -- Michael Gorra, author of The Saddest Words: William Faulkner' s Civil War With The Sinner and the Saint, Kevin Birmingham has scored a hat trick, delivering three biographies in one book-expertly chronicling the lives of the man who wrote Crime and Punishment and the murderer who inspired the tale, and the fascinating evolution of the novel itself. Birmingham' s ingenious braided narrative offers an inspired new reading to those who already know and love Dostoevsky' s masterpiece, and serves as an indispensable guide for first time readers. -- Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life and Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast
Kevin Birmingham received his Ph. D. in English from Harvard, where he was a Lecturer in English and in History & Literature as well as an instructor in the university' s Writing Program. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling The Most Dangerous Book. It received the PEN New England Award for Nonfiction in 2015 and the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in 2016.
Status: Indent title, imported to order
ISBN-13: 9780241235942
Published: 11 Nov 2021
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Allen Lane
Publisher: Penguin Books
Format: Hardback
Height: 240mm
Width: 156mm
Pages: 432

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