$22.95 (Paperback book / Picador / ISBN:9780330421959)
Twilight Of Love
Alongside his friends Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, Turgenev was one of the three great men of the Russian novel's golden age. Fathers and Sons and A Hunter's Notes caused sensations when they were published; by depicting serfs as human beings, the latter was said to have persuaded the Tsar to free them.
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.
What, then, did Turgenev mean by the word love?
Robert Dessaix has had his own forty-year relationship with Turgenev and his work, as a student of Russian, as a tutor, and as an old friend. Dessaix 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.
In a truly remarkable work of memoir, literary biography and travel writing – a cultural and physical exploration – Robert Dessaix has found the pulse that quickened Turgenev's age, and that has failed in ours.
Robert Dessaix
Twilight Of Love
$22.95 (Paperback book / Picador )
Alongside his friends Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, Turgenev was one of the three great men of the Russian novel's golden age. Fathers and Sons and A Hunter's Notes caused sensations when they were published; by depicting ser... More »
Mothers Disgrace
$24.95 (Paperback book / Harper Collins )
A reissue of the intimate and moving account of the search for origins and identity by respected author, broadcaster, essayist and translator Robert Dessaix.
Adopted as a baby towards the end of World War II, Robert Dess... More »
Night Letters
$22.95 (Paperback book / Picador )
Every night for twenty nights in a hotel room in Venice, an Australian man recently diagnosed with an incurable disease writes a letter home to a friend. In these letters he reflects on questions of mortality, seduction ... More »
And So Forth
$22.95 (Paperback book / Picador )
In this award-winning selection of short fiction, essays and journalism, Robert Dessaix offers insights into the many selves at play behind the mask of well-known broadcaster and author of Corfu and Night Letters. A book... More »
Corfu A Novel
$22.95 (Paperback book / Picador )
House in Gastouri for rent for 2 mths. Occupant travelling. Reasonable rent.' In a village on the island of Corfu, alone in the cottage of a man he's never met, a young Australian actor pieces together the strange life s... More »