Anka Muhlstein is a biographer whose work delves into the intricacies of historical figures and periods. Her writing style is characterized by meticulous research and a compelling narrative that brings the past to life for contemporary readers. She explores the motivations and complexities of her subjects, offering nuanced portraits that illuminate their significance. Muhlstein's dedication to historical accuracy and engaging prose makes her a distinguished voice in biographical writing.
Exploring the life of Camille Pissarro, the book delves into how his Jewish heritage influenced his artistic journey. As a pivotal figure in Impressionism, Pissarro maintained close ties with renowned artists like Monet and Van Gogh while grappling with feelings of alienation due to his Caribbean origins and Jewish background. Despite his atheism and avoidance of political themes in his art, his lineage shaped his perspective. Anka Muhlstein presents a detailed and personal portrayal, enriched by Pissarro's artwork and correspondence, highlighting his commitment to artistic freedom.
The second part of an infamous memoir about life in the time of Napoleon by a rebellious literary celebrity. In 1800, Fran�ois-Ren� de Chateaubriand sailed from the cliffs of Dover to the headlands of Calais. He was thirty-one, and had been living as a political refugee in England for most of a decade, at times in such extreme poverty he subsisted on nothing but hot water and two-penny rolls.Over the next fifteen years, his life changed utterly. He published Atala, Ren�, and The Genius of Christianity to acclaim and epoch-making scandal. He strolled the streets of Jerusalem and mapped the ruins of Carthage. He served Napoleon in Rome, then resigned in protest after the Duc d'Enghien's execution, putting his own life at tremendous risk. For these were also the years of Bonaparte's secret police, censorship, and warmongering--all of which Chateaubriand would come to oppose.Memoirs from Beyond the Grave, 1800-1815--the second volume in Alex Andriesse's new and complete translation of this epic French classic--is a chronicle of triumphs and sorrows, narrating not only the author's life during a tumultuous period in European history but the "parallel life" of Napoleon, from his birth on Corsica to his death on Saint Helena. In these pages, Chateaubriand continues to paint his distinctive self-portrait, in which the whole history of France swirls around the sitter like a mist of dreams.
Written over the course of four decades, François-René de Chateaubriand’s epic autobiography has drawn the admiration of Baudelaire, Flaubert, Proust, Barthes, and Sebald. Here, in the first books of his massive Memoirs, spanning the years 1768 to 1800, Chateaubriand looks back on the already bygone world of his youth. He recounts the history of his aristocratic family and the first rumblings of the French Revolution. He recalls playing games on the beaches of Saint-Malo, wandering in the woods near his father’s castle in Combourg, hunting with King Louis XVI at Versailles, witnessing the first heads carried on pikes through the streets of Paris, meeting with George Washington in Philadelphia, and falling hopelessly in love with a young woman named Charlotte in the small Suffolk town of Bungay. The volume ends with Chateaubriand’s return to France after seven years of exile in England. In this new edition (the first unabridged English translation of any portion of the Memoirs to be published in more than a century), Chateaubriand emerges as a writer of great wit and clarity, a self deprecating egotist whose meditations on the meaning of history, memory, and morality are leavened with a mixture of high whimsy and memorable gloom.
A scintillating glimpse into the lives of acclaimed writers and artists and their inspiring, often surprising convergences, from the author of Monsieur Proust's Library With the wit and penetration well known to readers of Anka Muhlstein’s previous books, The Pen and the Brush revisits the delights of the French novel. This time she focuses on late 19th- and 20th-century writers--Balzac, Zola, Proust, Huysmans, and Maupassant--through the lens of their passionate involvement with the fine arts. She delves into the crucial role that painters play as characters in their novels, which she pairs with an exploration of the profound influence that painting exercised on the novelists' techniques, offering an intimate view of the intertwined worlds of painters and writers at the time. Muhlstein's deftly chosen vignettes bring to life a portrait of the nineteenth century's tight-knit artistic community, where Cézanne and Zola befriended each other as boys and Balzac yearned for the approval of Delacroix. She leads the reader on a journey of spontaneous discovery as she explores how a great painting can open a mind and spark creative fire.
Reading was so important to Marcel Proust that it sometimes seems he was unable to create a personage without a book in hand. Everybody in his work reads: servants and masters, children and parents, artists and physicians. The more sophisticated characters find it natural to speak in quotations. Proust made literary taste a means of defining personalities and gave literature an actual role to play in his novels. In this wonderfully entertaining book, scholar and biographer Anka Muhlstein, the author of Balzac’s Omelette, draws out these themes in Proust's work and life, thus providing not only a friendly introduction to the momentous In Search of Lost Time, but also exciting highlights of some of the finest work in French literature.
The book presents a vivid portrayal of Balzac as an insatiable epicurean, characterized by his voracious appetite for life, wealth, women, and fame. It delves into the complexities of his personality, revealing the driving forces behind his literary genius and personal pursuits. Through this lens, the narrative explores the themes of desire and ambition that define Balzac's existence and creative output.
Every year for all the 30 they have been married, Louis Begley and Anka Muhlstein spend long, enjoyable months in Venice. They write and live there and over the decades La Serenissima has become their second home. The owners of their favourite restaurants have become their friends and they share the lives of the locals, far off the beaten tourist tracks, as Muhlstein describes in her contribution to this book. Louis Begley tells the story of how he fell in love with and in Venice. He is not the only one who did, as his literary essay on the city's place in world literature demonstrates. Henry James, Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann are only the most illustrious predecessors. Muhlstein and Begley's Venice is a very private view of a place, which will forever inspire dreams of love and passion
The Marquis de Custine's record of his trip to Russia in 1839 is a brilliantly perceptive, even prophetic, account of one of the world's most fascinating and troubled countries. It is also a wonderful piece of travel writing. Custine, who met with people in all walks of life, including the Czar himself, offers vivid descriptions of St. Petersburg and Moscow, of life at court and on the street, and of the impoverished Russian countryside. But together with a wealth of sharply delineated incident and detail, Custine's great work also presents an indelible picture--roundly denounced by both Czarist and Communist regimes--of a country crushed by despotism and "intoxicated with slavery." Letters from Russia, here published in a new edition prepared by Anka Muhlstein, the author of the Goncourt Prize-winning biography of Custine, stands with Tocqueville's Democracy in America as a profound and passionate encounter with historical forces that are still very much at work in the world today.
