A taste for freedom - Anka Muhlstein

Ambassador George Kennan once called Astolphe de Custine's Russia in 1839 'The Best guide to Russia ever written.' It was essential, in his view, to understanding Stalin and the Soviet Union. Its author was a cosmopolitain son of the French Revolution, whose father and granfather had been guillotined and whose mother had been imprisoned. Muhlstein's lively biography, translated by Teresa Waugh, introduces readers to Astolphe de Custine, a passionate literary figure, a poet, playwright, essayist, traveler, aristocrat, and homosexual adventurer.