Alex Christofi

A highly original and immersive new biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky, published to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth

An Intimate Life

Dostoevsky in Love

Glass is pure. Glass is transparent. Glass is sharp. Gunter Glass, ex-milkman and aspiring window-cleaner, is certainly pure. And he's pretty transparent. But the jury's still out on how sharp he is. What naive young Gunter does have is a head for heights and, ever since he visited a glassblower's workshop as a child, an unusual fixation with glass. When a minor adventure up the spire of Salisbury Cathedral makes Gunter a local celebrity, John Blades - window-cleaner to the stars - comes calling. He wants Gunter to join him in London to clean Europe's tallest skyscraper, the newly constructed Shard in London Bridge. With his mother recently passed away, his dad retired and no money to pay off the mortgage, Gunter takes Blades up on his offer and soon finds himself, for the first time, among the bright lights of London.

Glass

portret intymny

Dostojewski

Paris, 1958.Ralf is alone, filling his days with glasses of red wine at Jacques' bar, waiting for life to happen to him. Then, one night, Elsa - bold, enigmatic, unpredictable - whirls into Jacques' bar and into Ralf's world, knocking him out of his cautious routine and into a life full of spontaneity and excitement.But Elsa is hiding something. As Ralf falls deeper in love, he reveals more of his past - his childhood in Nazi Germany, his time in a British tank division at the end of the Second World War. But what is Elsa hiding? And can their love survive it?Let Us Be True charts the lives of these two extraordinary characters through an era of great uncertainty, from the war and its aftermath through to the deadly unrest of 1960s Paris. Evocative, charismatic and sweeping in scope, Alex Christofi's second novel is a moving story of love and loss, of the things we hide from ourselves and from others, and of the personal cost of Europe's turbulent twentieth century.

Let Us Be True

'A daring and mesmerizing twist on the art of biography' – Douglas Smith, author of Rasputin: The Biography 'Anyone who loves [Dostoevsky's] novels will be fascinated by this book' – Sue Prideaux, author of I Am Dynamite! A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche Dostoevsky's life was marked by brilliance and brutality. Sentenced to death as a young revolutionary, he survived mock execution and Siberian exile to live through a time of seismic change in Russia, eventually being accepted into the Tsar's inner circle. He had three great love affairs, each overshadowed by debilitating epilepsy and addiction to gambling. Somehow, amidst all this, he found time to write short stories, journalism and novels such as Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov, works now recognised as among the finest ever written. In Dostoevsky in Love Alex Christofi weaves carefully chosen excerpts of the author's work with the historical context to form an illuminating and often surprising whole. The result is a novelistic life that immerses the reader in a grand vista of Dostoevsky's world: from the Siberian prison camp to the gambling halls of Europe; from the dank prison cells of the Tsar's fortress 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, who did so much to secure his literary legacy. Reading between the lines of his fiction, Christofi reconstructs the memoir Dostoevsky might have written had life – and literary stardom – not intervened. He gives us a new portrait of the artist as never before seen: a shy but devoted lover, an empathetic friend of the people, a loyal brother and friend, and a writer able to penetrate to the very depths of the human soul.

Günter Glas weiß, dass er kein Superhirn ist. Aber er versucht inständig, ein guter Mensch zu sein und möglichst getreu den Ratschlägen seiner verstorbenen Mutter zu leben. Er will sie stolz machen, und deswegen ist seine Vision, der beste Fensterputzer der Welt zu werden. Der Weg dahin führt über die erste Liebe, die letzte Liebe, einen Todesfall in der Familie, einen verkappten Terroristen und einen unterirdischen Intellektuellen. Am Ende weiß er: Das Glück gehört denen, die sich nicht verbiegen lassen. Eine bezaubernde Komödie über einen ganz und gar ungewöhnlichen Menschen.

Roman

Mr. Glas

WINNER OF THE BETTY TRASK PRIZE 2016 Meet Gnter Glass - ex-milkman and aspiring window-cleaner, struggling to find his way in the world His mum has died, his dad's retired, he's just been let go from his milk round - and Gnter Glass has his head in the clouds. Fortunately, he also has a head for heights, and a lifelong fascination with glass. So when the call comes to clean the windows of the tallest skyscraper in London, he sets off for the big city with little more than youthful enthusiasm, a dual-squeegee holster and his dear departed mother's homespun wisdom. But will Gnter's innocence put him on a collision course with the modern world? He's never had a girlfriend, and now he's falling for a clairvoyant with unclear intentions. Most of what he knows about life comes from Wikipedia, so sharing a dingy flat with an eccentric German philosopher is a bit befuddling. And most worrying of all, he's starting to think his new boss may be a little unhinged ... Glass is a novel about learning to wise up to the world around you. Charming, funny and slyly clever, it establishes Alex Christofi as one of Britain's most exciting young writers.

Alex Christofi

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