Summer in Baden-Baden (Faber Editions) : 'A miracle' - Susan Sontag

Join Dostoevsky on his tumultuous honeymoon in this hypnotic cult classic , introduced by Susan Sontag.''A wonderful work of art.'' Jon McGregor''Extraordinary in its confidence and enchantment.'' Chris Power''Addictive, dreamlike and dazzlingly unique.'' Adam Thirlwell''Luminous, melancholy and enraptured.'' Chloe AridjisWhy was I reading this book now, in a railway-carriage, beneath a wavering, flickering, electric light-bulb . . Summer, 1867: The newlywed Dostoevsky and his young wife Anna - his one-time secretary - are travelling to the German spa resort of Baden-Baden on honeymoon. Their love is ecstatic, yet the author is plagued by demons: haunted by his crimes and punishments, consumed by fevers of jealousy, gambling to avoid mounting debts and shaken by epileptic fits. Winter, 1970s: Our Jewish narrator embarks on a pilgrimage from Moscow to Leningrad to trace the footsteps of his literary hero. As the train travels across the Soviet Union’s bleak expanses, he immerses himself in Anna''s travel journal: and their journeys - past and present, real and imagined – soon become entwined. The result of a clandestine literary vocation, Summer in Baden-Baden was smuggled out of the Soviet Union in 1981 and first published in a Russian émigré weekly in the USA. It has since been hailed as a trailblazing modern classic, translated into more than twenty languages - and its hypnotic, enigmatic power only grows.