'The Master Of Petersburg' is Dostoevsky, and the events described are both the background to and the subject matter of 'The Devils'. In 1869 he returned secretly to Petersburg just as the police were rounding up the Nechaev gang, a student anarchist movement notorious for having murdered one of its own members. Now Coetzee has insinuated himself into the cracks between the known facts and the fiction, to produce a stunning account of the relation of writers to events.
He has also written a moving account of a father's painful adjustment tot he death of a son; a harsh, eloquent critique of the human condition. It is also a subtle, powerful, superbly written personal testament. The bleakness of vision is tempered only by the certainty that life can be material for art.
Winner of the 1995 Irish Times International Fiction Prize.
