The Sinner and the Saint
- Proizvođač: Penguin
- Šifra proizvoda: 9780141981710
- Dostupnost: Na lageru
- €17.00
- Osnovica: €17.00
Dostoevsky, a
Crime and Its Punishment
By: Kevin
Birmingham
The incredible true story behind the
creation of a masterpiece of world literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and
Punishment
'A dazzling literary detective story' Guardian
In the summer of
1865, the former exile Dostoevsky found himself trapped in a cheap hotel in
Wiesbaden, unable to leave until he'd paid the bill. Having lost the last of
his money at the roulette table, his debts hung heavy over his head, his
epileptic seizures were worsening, and his wife and beloved brother were dead.
Desperate, a story came to him, a way to write himself out of his predicament:
the murderer Raskolnikov, the hot, disorienting swirl of St Petersburg, the
axe, the terrible crime, and the murderer's paranoia. The book was Crime and
Punishment, and from the moment it was published it was a sensation. But how
did this haunting tale of guilt come to be, and why does it still hold such a
sway over us all these years later?
The Sinner and
the Saint gives us the story of the creation of a work of literature that has
bewitched readers for over a century, and of the two men so central to it:
Dostoevsky himself, and Pierre François Lacenaire, a notorious murderer and
glamorous egoist who charmed and outraged Paris in the 1830s and whose
sensational story provided the germ of the novel. As reports of his trial tore
through Europe, readers asked themselves: could the instincts of nihilism, the
philosophy inspiring a new generation of Russian revolutionaries, also drive a
man to murder? Showing how both men's lives were directed by the intoxicating
new ideas swirling around Europe in the nineteenth century, The Sinner and the
Saint also reveals why they still appal and entice us today. Thrilling and
definitive, this is the story of a masterpiece.