The Master of Petersburg

In The Master of Petersburg J. M. Coetzee dares to imagine the life of Dostoevsky. Set in 1869, when Dostoevsky was summoned from Germany to St Petersburg by the sudden death of his stepson, this novel is at once a compelling mystery steeped in the atmosphere of pre-revolutionary Russia and a brilliant and courageous meditation on authority and rebellion, art and imagination. Dostoevsky is seen obsessively following his stepson's ghost, trying to ascertain whether he was a suicide or a murder victim and whether he loved or despised his stepfather. As he becomes entangled in the violent dreams of the same political activists who may have claimed his boy, Dostoevsky reveals himself as a figure of infathomable contradictions: naive and calculating, pious and perverse, compassionate and cruel.

Author: J M Coetzee

Publisher: Vintage

Released Date: 1995

ISBN: 9780749396329