A01=Robert Dessaix
Author_Robert Dessaix
Category=DNBL
Category=DSBF
Category=DSK
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Product details
- ISBN 9780743263399
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 06 Feb 2006
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Turgenev (1818-1883) was one of Russia's most famous writers, friend of Flaubert, Dostoyevsky and Henry James. Turgenev's private life was, perhaps, as remarkable as his public. For forty years he was passionately devoted to Pauline Viardot, a singer, following her and her husband around Europe. Yet their relationship was completely chaste - both had affairs with other people - and at various stages Turgenev lived amicably next door or upstairs from the Viardots. In fact, he described M Viardot as one of his dearest friends. What, then, did Turgenev mean by the word 'love'? Robert Dessaix learned Russian as a young man in the 1960s, and has been reading Turgenev on and off ever since. Over the course of his own forty year relationship, he has come to see Turgenev's life and work as illustrating a turning point in the history of love, as much as the history of Russia - the moment the Romantic became the Modern, the moment love became sex, and sex became a commodity.
Robert Dessaix is one of Australia's most respected writers and broadcasters. His previous books include A MOTHER'S DISGRACE, NIGHT LETTERS and CORFU. He lives in Melbourne.
