Description

Winner of the Costa Biography Award What makes a Stalin? Was he a Tsarist agent or Lenin's bandit? Was he to blame for his wife's death? When did the killing start? Based on revelatory research, here is the thrilling story of how a charismatic cobbler's son became a student priest, romantic poet, prolific lover, gangster mastermind and murderous revolutionary. Culminating in the 1917 revolution, Simon Sebag Montefiore's bestselling biography radically alters our understanding of the gifted politician and fanatical Marxist who shaped the Soviet empire in his own brutal image. This is the story of how Stalin became Stalin.

Promotion info

Simon Sebag Montefiore's STALIN received rave reviews, sold over 50,000 copies in hardback and 170,000 in paperback in the UK Based on hitherto unavailable souce materials in Russia Young Stalin is being filmed by Film 4/Miramax - the director is Pawlikowski 'A gripping read...the book provides a wealth of serious and scurrilous detail, creating a memorable portrait of one of the 20th century's greatest monsters' Antony Beevor, Daily Telegraph 'The story Montefiore has told requires the psychological penetration and social omniscience of a great novelist. Dickens once or twice peeps over the biographer's shoulder' Peter Conrad, Observer 'This picture of Stalin as a young poet is one of the revelations of Simon Sebag Montefiore's macabrely fascinating Young Stalin' Antonia Fraser, Mail on Sunday 'Simon Sebag Montefiore's thrilling portrait of Stalin's youth' Michael Burleigh, Sunday Telegraph 'What Montefiore gives us is a richly and fluently documented study of the chief terrorist in the making' Robert Service, Sunday Times

Awards

Winner of Costa Biography Award 2007. Shortlisted for James Tait Black Memorial Book Prizes: Biography 2008.

Author description

Simon Sebag Montefiore's books are international bestsellers in 27 languages. CATHERINE THE GREAT AND POTEMKIN was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, Duff Cooper, and Marsh Biography Prizes. STALIN won the History Book of the Year Prize at the 2004 British Book Awards. Montefiore is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, novelist, and TV presenter, he lives in London with his wife, the novelist Santa Montefiore, and their two children. He is now writing JERUSALEM: THE BIOGRAPHY.