Dostoevsky in Love

October 12, 2020
Fiction writer and book editor Christofi (Glass) provides a novelistic account of the life of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, with a focus on the Russian writer’s romantic life. Christofi traces Dostoyevsky’s miserable childhood, tempestuous adulthood, and novel-writing career, but also introduces readers to the women in Dostoyevsky’s life. They included Apollinaria Prokofievna Suslov, whom Dostoyevsky had an affair with after she submitted a short story to his literary journal, Time, and Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, who met Dostoyevsky after he advertised for a copyist for The Gambler, and married him soon after. Christofi’s approach pays off in his recreations of intimate scenes—“Deserted by language, Fyodor kissed hand over and over, and they drank hot chocolate together”—and in his revelations about Dostoyevsky’s fiction, as when the novelist confesses, before writing The Brothers Karamazov, “There is a novel in my head and my heart, and it’s begging to be written.” Christofi succeeds in revealing Dostoyevsky’s personality in ways no ordinary biographical treatment could.

Starred review from October 15, 2020
On his deathbed, Dostoevsky declared to his wife, Remember, Anna, I always loved you passionately. In this probing life study, Christofi illuminates the formative power of the great novelist's passionate love. Readers see how Anna, who refuses the writer's first proposal, finally responds to his romantic overtures by becoming his unfailing support, enabling him to achieve artistic greatness despite episodes of debilitating epilepsy, compulsive gambling, and desperate indebtedness. Indeed, it is Anna who serves as amanuensis as Dostoevsky dictates The Idiot, and as business manager for the publication of Devils. Readers come to understand why, when Anna grows perilously ill, Dostoevsky cries out, How can I live without her? She is everything to me. But Christofi's assiduously researched narrative also brings into view the two women who precede Anna in Dostoevsky's love: Maria, whose premature death ends the writer's frustrating first marriage, and Polina, whose humble origins make her youthful ambitions singularly inspiring. Beyond Dostoevsky's love for these three women, readers discern other potent loves: fraternal love for his brother Mikhail; paternal love for his four children; religious love for his Saviour. Readers come to recognize how Dostoevsky's diverse loves all fuse in his culminating masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov. Literary scholarship laudably synthesizing insightful analysis with emotional empathy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

February 1, 2021
An exploration of the tumultuous intimate relationships of the canonical Russian author and how they informed his work. Christofi, editorial director at Transworld Publishers and a Betty Trask Prize-winning novelist, is well-equipped for this biography of a "deeply moral writer" who was "fiercely devoted to raising up the downtrodden and giving them a voice." Even as he advocated for "the outcasts, the prostitutes, the humiliated, the sick and the silenced of his day," Dostoevsky's own life was "a succession of curses." He lost his mother during childhood, suffered from epilepsy, endured numerous failed relationships, faced hard labor in Siberia, struggled with a gambling habit, and lost his first child shortly after her birth, an event that led to "bottomless grief." He felt his emotions deeply, absorbed the experiences of those suffering around him, and poured his passion into his writing. "Ever since he had been sent to Siberia," writes Christofi, "storytelling had been his last refuge, the skin that kept the distance between his tender heart and the cruelties of the world." After experiencing publication setbacks for years, Dostoevsky eventually became "one of the preeminent names in Russian literature"--and found deep love with his second wife, Anna, a stenographer and memoirist. Unfortunately, by the time he finished the last chapters of The Brothers Karamazov, he was "dreadfully sick and worn out," surviving mostly on his dedication to his craft and abiding love for Anna. On his deathbed, he told his wife, "Remember, Anna, I always loved you passionately and was never unfaithful to you, even in my thoughts." Drawing on Dostoevsky's letters, journals, fiction, and other sources, Christofi successfully constructs a biographical portrait that is "both novelistic and true to life." The narrative is both an illuminating literary biography and an evocative snapshot of the context in which the great writer created his enduring work. Dostoevsky fans are certain to find this book insightful and captivating.

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