There have been many biographies of Stalin, but the court that surrounded him is untravelled ground. Simon Sebag Montefiore, acclaimed biographer of Catherine the Great's lover, prime minister and general Potemkin, has unearthed the vast underpinning that sustained Stalin. Not only ministers such as Molotov or secret service chiefs such as Beria, but men and women whose loyalty he trusted only until the next purge. 'Spectacular...an impressive and compelling work' Philip Mansel, Spectator 'This magnificent portrait of the dictator' Richard Overy, Literary Review

About the Author

Born in 1965 Simon Sebag Montefiore is a biographer, novelist and journalist. He contributes to the Sunday Times, the Spectator and the New York Republic and New York Times in the USA. In the early nineties he travelled through the turbulent ex-Soviet Caucasus and Central Asia and in 1996 presented a Channel 4 documentary on his 2000 mile desert quest for slavery in Mauritania. He now lives in London with his wife, Santa, nee Palmer-Tomkinson, and two children.

Prizes

Widespread colour advertising in national press Full package of POS plus sales presenter Simon Sebag Montefiore's website to be launched on paperback publication

Reviews

A big book in England and now a big book for this publisher, Montefiore's biography considers the vast social underpinnings that allowed Stalin to be Stalin. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

'Crammed with grimly revealing anecdotes and hitherto unheard testimony, this is a book that anatomises, with vivid insight and compelling readability, the corruptions of absolute power and the psychology of those who wield it. SUNDAY TIMES 'There is unlikely ever to be a more engrossing account of the life of Joseph Stalin than his huge biography.' -- Charles Osborne SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'As intellectually perceptive as it is horrifically enthralling the book is packed with insights into this ostensibly avuncular paranoid... prodigious in his research, Montefiore tells the grisly story with style and elegance.' -- Christopher Hirst THE INDEPENDENT 'Daily accounts from the breakfast table to the Politburo provide an incisive portrait of the inner workings of a brute's mind.' THE HERALD 'This isn't just a gripping slice of history, but an extraordinary psychological study of a murderous dictator who 'Knew He Was Right.' Here is more love, death and intrigue than you find in any thirller.' INDEPENDENT MAGAZINE 'a marvellously racy, gossipy study, based on immense research.' THE EVENING STANDARD 'Simon Sebag Montefiore's writing is caustic and superb and he wears his rigorous scholarship with style.' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'This is not simply another book about Stalin. It is a horrifying, hypnotic and at times, darkly amusing account of the lives of the families who ruled the Soviet Union... this page turner captivates and repels in equal measures.' THE OBSERVER 'This book should help purge any lingering nostalgia for the USSR.' IRISH TIMES 'there are plenty of political histories of the Stalinist era, but what makes Simon Sebag Montefiore's grimly fascinating book so special is the intimate protrait he sketches of the Soviet dictator's close circle of family and friends.' MAIL ON SUNDAY

Montefiore (The Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin) is more interested in life at the top than at the bottom, so he includes hundreds of pages on Stalin's purges of top Communists, while devoting much less space to the forced collectivization of Soviet peasants that led to millions of deaths. In lively prose, he intersperses his mammoth account of Stalin's often-deadly political decisions with the personal lives of the Soviet dictator and those around him. As a result, the reader learns about sexual peccadilloes of the top Communists: Stalin's secret police chief Lavrenti Beria, for one, "craved athletic women, haunting the locker rooms of Soviet swimmers and basketball players." Stalin's own escapades after the death of his wife are also noted. There's also much detail about the food at parties and other meetings of Stalin's henchmen. The effect is paradoxical: Stalin and his cronies are humanized at the same time as their cruel misdeeds are recounted. Montefiore offers little help in answering some of the unsettled questions surrounding Stalin: how involved was he in the 1934 murder of rising official Sergei Kirov, for example. He also seems to leave open the question of Stalin's paranoia: he argues that the Georgian-born ruler was a charming man who used his people skills to get whatever he wanted. Montefiore mainly skirts the paranoia issue, noting that only after WWII, when Stalin launched his anti-Semitic campaigns, did he "become a vicious and obsessional anti-Semite." There are many Stalin biographies out there, but this fascinating work distinguishes itself by its extensive use of fresh archival material and its focus on Stalin's ever-changing coterie. Maps and 24 pages of photos not seen by PW. Agent, Georgina Capel. (Apr.) Forecast: With a 75,000 first printing, this is likely to draw in Slavophiles and history buffs. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.