Book: The master of Petersburg
Author: J. M. Coetzee
Publisher: Penguin books
Reviewed by: Tony Mochama

Perhaps only a writer of J. M. Coetzee▓s stature (winner of the Booker for his novel, "Disgrace," and a Noble for literature) would dare to imagine a year in the life of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the great nineteenth century novelist, and set it in book form.

The year is 1869, Dostoyevsky, haunted by the death of his son and wracked with guilt (he sent the lad, Pavel Alexandrovich, a savage missive over his extravagance, just before the young man▓s demise) comes to St. Petersburg √ from Dresden √ to ascertain whether his son committed suicide or was murdered.

In the process, he gets entangled with a policemun called Marx Maximov, a tramp called Ivanov, a revolutionary called Sergei and a woman called Anna Sergeyevna and her daughter, Matryona.

As Dostoyevsky becomes entangled in the violent dreams of the men who may have executed his boy, Coetzee attempts to explore the great Russian themes of love and death through the first person singular, through the "remembrances of a man who embraced a widow and her

child." In the process, the surfaces of paedophilia in St. Petersburg▓s dark alleys are explored by Coetzee, in an attempt literature readers will recognise as a facsimile of Nabokov▓s "Lolita" in another Era. 1869.

Coetzee▓s biggest failing, to this reviewer▓s thinking, is the void created by his non-exploration of Fyodor Dostoyevsky▓s creative life which, considering the character whose life he recreates, maynot quite be a disgrace.

But it is a dreadful pity, all the same.