From the hand of one of the most acclaimed historians of our time comes the great biography of Rasputin.
When the widowed empress of Russia was pregnant with the future czar, she had a dream that would mark the rest of her days: her son would die at the hands of a peasant. Would that prophecy come true with the arrival at court of Grigori Rasputin, an enigmatic, barely literate monk from Siberia?
In this extraordinary portrait, Antony Beevor (in the photo) brings the reader closer than ever to the scandalous life and death of Rasputin. Although he never held an official position at court, he exerted a decisive influence over the Romanovs and was involved in episodes of political and financial corruption and numerous sexual scandals. The consequences of the rumors and conspiracy theories surrounding him led to such disaffection towards the czar’s court that, when the February Revolution of 1917 broke out, almost no one raised a sword in his defense.
Through reports, interviews, and unpublished interrogations, Beevor reveals the truth behind the legend of Rasputin: the motivations of his political opportunism, his deep hypocrisy, and his unrestrained lust. Between a political thriller and a gothic mystery, this biography reveals a fascinating story of human perversion and the fall of empires.
Antony Beevor, educated at Winchester and Sandhurst, was a regular officer in the British Army, which he left after five years of service, and moved to Paris, where he wrote his first novel. His essays, translated into more than thirty languages and published in Spanish by Crítica, have won several awards, especially Stalingrad (2000), which received the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson History Prize, and the Hawthornden Prize, and Berlin. The Fall: 1945 (2002), which have seen a dozen editions in Spanish.
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Editorial Crítica
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 9788491998907
Price: 23.75 euros
