Sentenced to death as a young revolutionary, a survivor of a mock execution and Siberian exile, a courtier in the Tsar's inner circle - Fyodor Dostoevsky's life was marked by brilliance and brutality. One of the greatest writers of all time, his life was also measured in three great love affairs, each overshadowed by his debilitating epilepsy and addiction to gambling. In Dostoevsky in Love, Alex Christofi weaves the writer's work together with the history of Russia to create a breathtaking and illuminating tapestry of Dostoevsky's life: from a Siberian prison camp to the refined salons of St Petersburg. Along the way, Christofi relates the stories of the three women whose lives were so deeply intertwined with Dostoevsky's: the consumptive widow Maria; the impetuous Polina who had visions of assassinating the Tsar; and the faithful stenographer Anna. In this extraordinary book Christofi reconstructs the memoir Dostoevsky might have written had life - and literary stardom - not intervened. Book jacket.