The Master of Petersburg

by J.M. Coetzee

Set in St. Petersburg in 1869. The Russian novelist Dostoevsky, who fled to Germany to escape his debts, has returned because his beloved stepson, Pavel, is dead. As the writer explores Pavel's rented room, he wonders whether the death was murder or suicide, begins to find the landlady and her daughter sexually attractive, and encounters a cultish terrorist--themes similar to those he weaves into his novels. 1994.