Pushkin A Biography

In the course of his short, dramatic life, Aleksandr Pushkin gave Russia not only its greatest poetryincluding the novel-in-verseEugene Oneginbut a new literary language. He also gave it a figure of enduring romantic allurefiery, restless, extravagant, a prodigal gambler and inveterate seducer of women. Having forged a dazzling, controversial career that cost him the enmity of one tsar and won him the patronage of another, he died at the age of thirty-eight, following a duel with a French officer who was paying unscrupulous attention to his wife. In his magnificent, prizewinningPushkin,T. J. Binyon lifts the veil of the iconic poet's myth to reveal the complexity and pathos of his life while brilliantly evoking Russia in all its nineteenth-century splendor. Combining exemplary scholarship with the pace and detail of a great novel,Pushkinelevates biography to a work of art.

T. J. Binyon lectures on Russian literature at Oxford University and is a senior research fellow at Wadham College. He is also the author of <i>Murder Will Out,</i> a history of the fictional detective, and two thrillers, <i>Swan Song</i> and <i>Greek Gifts</i>. He lives with his wife in Oxfordshire, England.<br><br><br><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>