Published 20 years after the death of its author, SUMMER IN BADEN-BADEN begins in the form of a memoir: the narrator is traveling by train to the famed Black Forest spa, and en route he is reading the account by Dostoevskys wife, Anna, of their years together. Simultaneously, it tells the story of the writers marriage, and of the months in 1867 he and Anna, who was pregnant, spent in Baden-Baden, where Dostoevsky wrote, gambled, drank, and agonized over the direction his work was taking. Interwoven with these two stories are disquisitions on the characters in Dostoevskys novels, his friends, and his anti-Semitism. Introduction by Susan Sontag. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.