Author(s): J.M. Coetzee

Fiction

In The Master of Petersburg J. M. Coetzee dares to imagine the life of Dostoyevsky. Set in 1869, when Dostoyevsky was summoned from Germany to St Petersburg by the sudden death of his stepson, this novel is at once a compelling mystery steeped in the atmosphere of pre-revolutionary Russia and a brilliant and courageous meditation on authority and rebellion, art and imagination. Dostoyevsky is seen obsessively following his stepson's ghost, trying to ascertain whether he was a suicide or a murder victim and whether he loved or despised his stepfather.