Birmingham’s chapters on Dostoyevsky’s exile are among the finest.

Dexterous.

... tautly constructed.

... interpretive and immersive.

Meticulously piecing together the debates that fired Dostoevsky’s imagination, The Sinner and the Saint is filled with arresting details that bring the turbulence of the 1860s to life.

These are not new subjects; but Birmingham writes the kind of deeply researched and deeply felt literary biographies for which clichéd rave terms, 'immersive' and 'reads like a novel' were coined.

Birmingham devotes too much space to Lacenaire’s seductive story without demonstrating its centrality to Crime and Punishment.

Birmingham sets out to provide the first 'sustained attention to what Lacenaire meant to Dostoyevsky.' But amid summary and analysis of the novel, Dostoyevsky’s life up to the point of its completion, and the intellectual climate in Russia, Lacenaire gets comparatively little real estate. The evidence of Dostoyevsky’s engagement with the French murder case is simple.

This true tale of self-consciousness forces readers to consider whether a person’s intentions matters or if their actions should define them. Birmingham loudly proclaims Dostoevsky’s triumph against the evil of his creation Raskolnikov while pushing readers to consider the impact of fiction itself.

Birmingham’s riveting dual narrative provides a multifaceted exploration of nineteenth-century thought and society. His deep reading of Dostoevsky’s journals and drafts provides penetrating insights into the artistic process and how Dostoevsky sought to write from the killer Raskolnikov’s perspective (raskol is Russian for schism). The cultural and literary influence of Crime and Punishment is incalculable, introducing a character both brilliant and chilling, who is perhaps best illustrated by a question posed by one of Lacenaire’ s doctors, 'How is it your intelligence did not protect you from yourself?'.

Birmingham conveys in vibrant detail Dostoevsky’s literary aspirations, struggles to publish, and tumultuous world of 'angels and demons.' Prodigious research enlivens a vigorous reappraisal of the writer’s life..

... this erudite yet tangled study...delves deep.