Rudolf Nureyev: The Life – Julie Kavanagh

Condition : Good.
First Edition, Penguin, 2007, Hardback with removable protective plastic wrap – Biographical – 787pp. ISBN 9781905490158.

Born on a train in Stalin’s Russia, Rudolf Nureyev was ballet’s first pop icon. No other dancer of our time has generated the same excitement – both on and off stage.

Nureyev’s achievements and conquests became legendary: he rose out of Tatar peasant poverty to become the Kirov’s thrilling maverick star; slept with his beloved mentor’s wife; defected to the West in 1961; sparked Rudimania across the globe; established the most rhapsodic partnership in dance history with the middle-aged Margot Fonteyn; reinvented male technique; gatecrashed modern dance; moulded new stars; and staged Russia’s unknown ballet masterpieces in the West. He and his life were simply astonishing.

‘Magnificent, a triumph. Captures every facet of this extraordinary man’ – Mail on Sunday
‘The definitive study of a man who, in his combination of aesthetic grace and psychological grime, can truly be called a sacred monster’ – Observer
‘Undoubtedly the definitive biography’ – Sunday Telegraph

‘A gripping account of an extraordinary life’ – Daily Telegraph