Twenty Six Days in the Life of Dostoevsky

Anatoliy Solonitsyn as Dostoevsky

A bit too neat and tidy, maybe, but Twenty Six Days in the Life of Dostoevsky is serious and sincere and has two canny performances at its centre: Anatoliy Solonitsyn as the Russian writer and Evgeniya Simonova as the woman who saved him. The neatness and tidiness is exemplified by the opening scene, where two friends discuss Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky’s terrible financial position. He’s broke, it seems, and if he doesn’t deliver his latest novel to the publisher by the end of the month, he’ll lose the right to all the royalties on all his books for the next nine years. Maybe what Dostoevsky needs, one of the friends suggests to the other, … Read more