Book description
Summer in Baden-Baden is Leonid Tsypkin's beautiful and
original cult classic.
One bitterly cold winter in the 1970s, Leonid Tsypkin's obsession
with Dostoyevsky leads him to Leningrad by train, so that he can see
for himself where his hero died. As the train makes its way across
Russia, a journal inspires Tsypkin to conjure up the summer of 1867,
when Dosteyevsky and his young wife Anna travelled across Europe to
Baden-Baden. The destructive demons that beset Dostoyevsky in his
later life were in full force at this time, and man and wife battled
for their very souls. Yet in Tsypkin's hands this elegy to the great
Russian writer becomes a glorious and unforgettable love story.
Praise for Summer in Baden-Baden:
'A remarkable fantasia . . . written in a unique and unforgettable
style' James Wood, Guardian
'A hypnotic double narrative, a journey within a journey, both real
and imagined, from the present to the past and back again, told in
miraculous prose' Evening Standard
'Luminous, extraordinary, magnificent' Literary Review
Leonid Tsypkin was born in Minsk in 1926 of Russian-Jewish parents.
Summer in Baden-Baden is the culmination of a passionate,
clandestine literary vocation. A distinguished medical researcher by
profession, Tsypkin never had even a measure of 'underground' fame.
Twice denied permission to leave the Soviet Union with his family, he
died of a heart attack in Moscow in 1982.
Leonid Tsypkin was born in Minsk in 1926 of Russian-Jewish parents.
Summer in Baden-Baden
is the culmination of a passionate, clandestine literary vocation. A
distinguished medical researcher by profession, Tsypkin never had even a
measure of 'underground' fame. Twice denied permission to leave the
Soviet Union with his family, he died of a heart attack in Moscow in
1982.
