{"product_id":"book-en3o","title":"The Sinner and the Saint","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e*A\u003ci\u003e New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eBook Review\u003c\/i\u003e Editors' Choice * One of \u003ci\u003eThe East Hampton Star\u003c\/i\u003e's 10 Best Books of the Year*\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Most Dangerous Book\u003c\/i\u003e, the true story behind the creation of another masterpiece of world literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky's \u003ci\u003eCrime and Punishment\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Sinner and the Saint \u003c\/i\u003eis 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. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe germ of \u003ci\u003eCrime and Punishment\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eLacenaire 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe 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.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eDostoevsky's great subject was self-consciousness. \u003ci\u003eCrime and Punishment \u003c\/i\u003eadvanced a revolution in artistic thinking and began the greatest phase of Dostoevsky's career. \u003ci\u003eThe Sinner and the Saint\u003c\/i\u003e now gives us the thrilling and definitive story of that triumph.","brand":"Penguin Random House","offers":[{"title":"Audiobook","offer_id":49326011351344,"sku":"BDen3o","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0879\/2784\/9264\/files\/410721-en3o-Square.jpg?v=1733601069","url":"https:\/\/downpour.com\/products\/book-en3o","provider":"Downpour","version":"1.0","type":"link"}