History & Criticism
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The Sinner and the Saint: Dostoevsky and the Gentleman Murderer Who Inspired a Masterpiece
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Most Dangerous Book, the true story behind the creation of another masterpiece of world literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.
"The Sinner and the Saint is a gripping murder mystery-a dazzling literary ‘howdunnit' that meticulously reconstructs the political ferment that inspired Dostoevsky's most famous novel. At the heart of it all is Raskolnikov's real-life double, a charming gentleman murderer whose trial set Parisian society ablaze." -Alex Christofi, author of Dostoevsky in Love
The Sinner and the Saint is the deeply researched and immersive tale of how Dostoevsky came to write this great murder story-and why it changed the world. As a young man, Dostoevsky was a celebrated writer, but his involvement with the radical politics of his day condemned him to a long Siberian exile. There, he spent years studying the criminals that were his companions. Upon his return to St. Petersburg in the 1860s, he fought his way through gambling addiction, debilitating debt, epilepsy, the deaths of those closest to him, and literary banishment to craft an enduring classic.
The germ of Crime and Punishment came from the sensational story of Pierre François Lacenaire, a notorious murderer who charmed and outraged Paris in the 1830s. Lacenaire was a glamorous egoist who embodied the instincts that lie beneath nihilism, a western-influenced philosophy inspiring a new generation of Russian revolutionaries. Dostoevsky began creating a Russian incarnation of Lacenaire, a character who could demonstrate the errors of radical politics and ideas. His name would be Raskolnikov.
Lacenaire shaped Raskolnikov in profound ways, but the deeper insight, as Birmingham shows, is that Raskolnikov began to merge with Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky was determined to tell a murder story from the murderer's perspective, but his character couldn't be a monster. No. The murderer would be chilling because he wants so desperately to be good.
The writing consumed Dostoevsky. As his debts and the predatory terms of his contract caught up with him, he hired a stenographer to dictate the final chapters in time. Anna Grigorievna became Dostoevsky's first reader and chief critic and changed the way he wrote forever. By the time Dostoevsky finished his great novel, he had fallen in love.
Dostoevsky's great subject was self-consciousness. Crime and Punishment advanced a revolution in artistic thinking and began the greatest phase of Dostoevsky's career. The Sinner and the Saint now gives us the thrilling and definitive story of that triumph.
"The Sinner and the Saint is a gripping murder mystery-a dazzling literary ‘howdunnit' that meticulously reconstructs the political ferment that inspired Dostoevsky's most famous novel. At the heart of it all is Raskolnikov's real-life double, a charming gentleman murderer whose trial set Parisian society ablaze." -Alex Christofi, author of Dostoevsky in Love
The Sinner and the Saint is the deeply researched and immersive tale of how Dostoevsky came to write this great murder story-and why it changed the world. As a young man, Dostoevsky was a celebrated writer, but his involvement with the radical politics of his day condemned him to a long Siberian exile. There, he spent years studying the criminals that were his companions. Upon his return to St. Petersburg in the 1860s, he fought his way through gambling addiction, debilitating debt, epilepsy, the deaths of those closest to him, and literary banishment to craft an enduring classic.
The germ of Crime and Punishment came from the sensational story of Pierre François Lacenaire, a notorious murderer who charmed and outraged Paris in the 1830s. Lacenaire was a glamorous egoist who embodied the instincts that lie beneath nihilism, a western-influenced philosophy inspiring a new generation of Russian revolutionaries. Dostoevsky began creating a Russian incarnation of Lacenaire, a character who could demonstrate the errors of radical politics and ideas. His name would be Raskolnikov.
Lacenaire shaped Raskolnikov in profound ways, but the deeper insight, as Birmingham shows, is that Raskolnikov began to merge with Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky was determined to tell a murder story from the murderer's perspective, but his character couldn't be a monster. No. The murderer would be chilling because he wants so desperately to be good.
The writing consumed Dostoevsky. As his debts and the predatory terms of his contract caught up with him, he hired a stenographer to dictate the final chapters in time. Anna Grigorievna became Dostoevsky's first reader and chief critic and changed the way he wrote forever. By the time Dostoevsky finished his great novel, he had fallen in love.
Dostoevsky's great subject was self-consciousness. Crime and Punishment advanced a revolution in artistic thinking and began the greatest phase of Dostoevsky's career. The Sinner and the Saint now gives us the thrilling and definitive story of that triumph.
Editorial Reviews
"[An] inspired account of the genesis-philosophical and neurological-of Crime and Punishment . . . Birmingham is superb . . . on the intellectual environment, the vibrational stew." -James Parker, The Atlantic
"Kevin Birmingham-whose Ulysses history The Most Dangerous Book never got the audience it deserved-returns with The Sinner and the Saint, digging deeply into the true story behind Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment." -Chicago Tribune Fall Book Preview
"The Sinner and the Saint is a gripping murder mystery-a dazzling literary ‘howdunnit' that meticulously reconstructs the political ferment that inspired Dostoevsky's most famous novel. At the heart of it all is Raskolnikov's real-life double, a charming gentleman murderer whose trial set Parisian society ablaze." -Alex Christofi, author of Dostoevsky in Love
"A 19th-century true-crime/literary tale in which two lives become enmeshed in evil. Award-winning literary historian Birmingham elaborates on the trials and travails of Dostoevsky (1821-1881) by interweaving his life with that of notorious French outlaw Pierre Francois Lacenaire . . . Birmingham conveys in vibrant detail Dostoevsky's literary aspirations, struggles to publish, and tumultuous world of ‘angels and demons.' Prodigious research enlivens a vigorous reappraisal of the writer's life." -Kirkus (starred)
"Urgent, restless and aphoristic . . . The result is an absorbing, thickly textured biography of Crime and Punishment that develops through fragments and shards . . . a considerable feat . . . a bold and rewarding book that will allow readers, whatever their own predispositions, to return to Dostoevsky's first masterpiece with a renewed and more capacious perspective." -Oliver Ready, Literary Review
"Offers the kind of access point that provides readers an entry into Dostoevsky's creative psyche . . . as Birmingham's book lays out so well, the bigger the failure portrayed on the page, the greater Dostoevsky's literary achievement." -David Stromberg, The American Scholar
"Kevin Birmingham's impressive research combined with a flair for characterising the teeming intellectual debates of the day give absorbing insights into the origins of one of the world's great novels." -Sue Prideaux, author of I Am Dynamite! A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche
"I never imagined anyone could make Dostoevsky richer-deeper-knottier-than he already was. But by revealing the secret background behind Crime and Punishment, Kevin Birmingham reveals a depth of thought and feeling that makes this most shocking of novels ...
"Kevin Birmingham-whose Ulysses history The Most Dangerous Book never got the audience it deserved-returns with The Sinner and the Saint, digging deeply into the true story behind Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment." -Chicago Tribune Fall Book Preview
"The Sinner and the Saint is a gripping murder mystery-a dazzling literary ‘howdunnit' that meticulously reconstructs the political ferment that inspired Dostoevsky's most famous novel. At the heart of it all is Raskolnikov's real-life double, a charming gentleman murderer whose trial set Parisian society ablaze." -Alex Christofi, author of Dostoevsky in Love
"A 19th-century true-crime/literary tale in which two lives become enmeshed in evil. Award-winning literary historian Birmingham elaborates on the trials and travails of Dostoevsky (1821-1881) by interweaving his life with that of notorious French outlaw Pierre Francois Lacenaire . . . Birmingham conveys in vibrant detail Dostoevsky's literary aspirations, struggles to publish, and tumultuous world of ‘angels and demons.' Prodigious research enlivens a vigorous reappraisal of the writer's life." -Kirkus (starred)
"Urgent, restless and aphoristic . . . The result is an absorbing, thickly textured biography of Crime and Punishment that develops through fragments and shards . . . a considerable feat . . . a bold and rewarding book that will allow readers, whatever their own predispositions, to return to Dostoevsky's first masterpiece with a renewed and more capacious perspective." -Oliver Ready, Literary Review
"Offers the kind of access point that provides readers an entry into Dostoevsky's creative psyche . . . as Birmingham's book lays out so well, the bigger the failure portrayed on the page, the greater Dostoevsky's literary achievement." -David Stromberg, The American Scholar
"Kevin Birmingham's impressive research combined with a flair for characterising the teeming intellectual debates of the day give absorbing insights into the origins of one of the world's great novels." -Sue Prideaux, author of I Am Dynamite! A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche
"I never imagined anyone could make Dostoevsky richer-deeper-knottier-than he already was. But by revealing the secret background behind Crime and Punishment, Kevin Birmingham reveals a depth of thought and feeling that makes this most shocking of novels ...
