Binyon, T.J. - Pushkin

A Biography

New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003, first American Edition

Hardcover. Half Cloth. Title in Silver on the Spine. With Dustjacket
16,5 x 24 x 4 cm.
727 Pages

BRAND NEW

In the course of his short, dramatic life, Aleksandr Pushkin gave Russia not only its greatest poetry–including the novel-in-verse Eugene Onegin–but a new literary language.
He also gave it a figure of enduring romantic allure–fiery, 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, prizewinning Pushkin, 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, Pushkin elevates biography to a work of art.

‘Only a biographer of the first rank could show how the poet's brilliant spirit was extinguished, not just by a regime, but by elements in that regime that to some extent reflected his own personality.
That is true tragedy, and that is Russia.'
George Walden, Sunday Telegraph

‘A weighty biography in every sense, Binyon's book is poignant, brisk and at times downright funny: the best possible tribute to the changeable and elusively fascinating character of its subject.'
Catriona Kelly, Guardian

'A grippingly entertaining and magnificently authoritative account of the poet's life, which is, almost unbelievably, the first to appear in any language since 1937.'
Alan Marshall, Daily Telegraph

In T.J Binyon Pushkin has finally found the biographer he deserves.
Here in all its splendour is his rebellious, flamboyant personality and his world of tenuous finance, imperial balls and sexual adventure...
Pushkin remains immortal and he certainly lives again in this book.'
Simon Sebag Montefiore, Mail on Sunday

Binyon's Life gives a marvellously clear sense of the man Pushkin might have been to meet: alternately belligerent and sweet, physically small. On the matter of Pushkin's politics, Binyon is excellent.'
Ian Thomson, Independent on Sunday

Scrupulously researched, lucidly and ojectively written, with an admirable lightness of touch and a good dose of dry humour'.
Economist

‘Readable, perceptive and witty... a valuable achievement.'
Jonathan Sumption, Spectator

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