Isaiah Berlin: A Life

Description

'I do not see how there could be a more insightful, more erudite, biography of this remarkable man' Doris Lessing, Times Literary Supplement Isaiah Berlin refused to write an autobiography, but he agreed to talk about himself - and so for ten years, he allowed Michael Ignatieff to interview him. Isaiah Berlin (1909-97) was one of the greatest and most humane of modern philosophers; historian of the Russian intellgentisia biographer of Marx, pioneering scholar of the Romantic movement and defender of the liberal idea of freedom. His own life was caught up in the most powerful currents of the century. The son of a Riga timber merchant, he witnessed the Russian Revolution, was plunged into suburban school life and the ferment of 1930s Oxford; he became part of the British intellectual establishment During the war, he as at the heart of Anglo-American diplomacy in Washington; afterwards in Moscow he saw the grim despair of Stalinism. The book is full of memorable meetings - with Virginia Woolf and Sigmund Freud, with Churchill, with Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova. Yet Ignatieff is not afraid to delve into Berlin's conflicts- his jewish idealism, his deep aspirations. This is a work of great subtelty and penetration, exhilarating and intimate, powerful and profound.

Michael Ignatieff is internationally renowned both as a commentator on moral, ethical and political issues and as a novelist. His novel Scar Tissue was short listed for the Booker Prize in 1993, and his non-fiction works include a biography of Isaiah Berlin, and four books on ethnic war and intervention: Blood and Belonging, The Warrior's Honour, Virtual War and the recent Empire Lite: Nation Building in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan.

A work of literature and an eloquent portrait...an explanation of this most remarkable twentieth-century figure...Though Berlin will be the subject of many future studies, one cannot imagine anyone feeling the need to improve on this biography * Observer * Enthralling...More than an authorised biography...An affectionate and admiring, but none the less independently-minded portrait...A serious book, but also a vivid, lively and uplifting one * Evening Standard * Reading Ignatieff's Isaiah Berlin, you feel you are understanding not only Isaiah Berlin, but the history...I do not see how there could be a more insightful, more erudite, biography of this remarkable man -- Doris Lessing * Times Literary Supplement * A rare gem of a book...It will add a new dimension to the afterlife of the philosopher * Sunday Times * Brings off the near-impossible - a lifelike portrait of a man who was loved by his friends not for what he wrote, but what he said -- Humphrey Carpenter * Sunday Times Books of the Year *