Pushkin’s Button - Softcover

The dramatic true story of the love affair between Russia’s greatest poet, his wife and her lover, french hussar George d’Anthes – and the tragic duel that followed.

Pushkin’s Button is an astonishing tour de force, a riveting account of the last few months of Pushkin’s life before his death on 27 January 1837.

It is also the story of the French soldier who killed him, Georges d’Anthes, a man in love with Natalya Pushkin, the poet’s wife, the most beautiful woman in all St Petersburg. Vitale’s extensive archival detective work has unearthed a mass of fascinating written material about this famous love triangle – journals, letters, scraps of gossip by those in their circle – that brings the indulgent world of 1830s St Petersburg, with its salons and imperial balls, vividly into focus.

Sparkling throughout with Pushkin’s own genial wit, Serena Vitale’s book is, as George Steiner says, ‘almost impossible to put down’.

Alexander Pushkin died in excruciating pain on 27 January 1837, from gunshot wounds sustained in a duel two days earlier. At the time, next to the Tsar, the author of Eugene Onegin was the most famous man in Russia. Pushkin's Button, Serena Vitale's astonishing piece of literary detective work, is the account of the last few months of his short life. It is also the story of Baron Georges d'Anthès who killed him, a man in love with Natalya Pushkin, the poet's wife and the most beautiful woman in St Petersburg.

Serena Vitale has spent many years sifting through archives, searching for motives among the principal players. Her prodigious scholarship has unearthed family secrets, diaries, courtroom records and, thrillingly, a cache of letters from d'Anthès to his adoptive father, found in a Paris attic ten years ago, in which he expresses his deep love for Natalya. A pawnbroker's slip and even a button missing from Pushkin's Kamerjunker uniform become significant. With this wealth of evidence and a keen sense of storytelling, Vitale has constructed a detailed record of this tragic event which shook Russia to its core, and in so doing she brings into focus 1830s St Petersburg, with its imperial balls and its salons, love affairs and gossip. What emerges is a fascinating story of suspense and discovery that grips the reader from the first page to the last, a literary history like no other.