8vo. xiii, 314 pp., 65 b/w & colour illus., 3 maps, publisher’s original wrappers, very good condition, notes, appendices, biblio, index, I. B. Tauris, London, 2002.

Synopsis

When a Tehran mob broke into the Russian embassy and murdered all the diplomats there, the dead included one of the most brilliant and promising writers of 19th-century Russia, Alexander Griboyedov. In this first biography of Griboyedov in English, Laurence Kelly paints a vivid picture of his remarkable literary and diplomatic gifts which were nevertheless overshadowed by ill-fortune. He narrowly escaped punishment for involvement with the 1825 December plot to overthrow the Tsarist state. And his role as a diplomat in the dangerous game of Russian imperial expansion in Iran was to cost him his life.