Summer in Baden Baden, by Leonid Tsypkin

A man in the 1970s Soviet Union reflects on the life of one of Russia’s greatest writers. 

Leonid Tsypkin (1926-1982) was a Soviet writer and medical doctor. He and his wife tried several times to emigrate, but were unsuccessful. Tsypkin’s attempts to leave were not appreciated by the Soviet regime, and he was demoted from his job and suffered humiliating pay cuts. The couple lived in crushing poverty and Tsypkin died at the age of 56, of a heart attack. His only full length novel, Summer in Baden Baden, was published the week before his death. It was his only fiction that he would see in print. An English translation by Roger and Angela Keys appeared in 1987, and the novel soon sunk back into obscurity. In the early 1990s, American critic Susan Sontag was rummaging in a dump bin of old paperbacks in a Charing Cross bookshop and by chance came across Tsypkin’s yet-to-be classic. Sontag’s intervention ensured success (and even renewed Russian interest) and Summer in Baden Baden has now entered the pantheon of Russian literature.

It’s the 1970s, a Russian winter. An unnamed Jewish narrator catches a train from Moscow to Leningrad, tracing the footsteps of his literary hero, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and along the way making a few autobiographical digressions. He has borrowed from his aunt a published diary by Dostoyevsky’s wife, Anna. The diary relates an infamous gambling trip Dostoyevsky and his wife took to the German resort town of Baden Baden. The narrator describes in his own words the madness of Dostoyevsky’s obsession with gambling, his addiction and pathetic weakness. Dostoyevsky has an uncontrollable compulsion to gamble big and recklessly, running back to his wife in shame and humiliation after losing all, asking for forgiveness, only to return to the gambling tables to lose all again. The novel then jumps to Dostoyevsky’s final years, devoting a substantial final stretch to his death. 

I didn’t expect to like Summer in Baden Baden. Its style is unusual and off putting, written in extremely long sentences, mostly one to two page length paragraph-blocks. However, the prose is warm and inviting - if somewhat breathless. Tsypkin does an excellent job of describing a complex marriage, often on the brink of destruction by one partner (Dostoyevsky) but saved by the grace and saintly patience of the other (Anna). It’s a portrait of a vulnerable couple trying to hold all together, despite so many personal demons. The last section of the novel, dealing with Dostoyevsky’s death, and Anna’s shock and disbelief, is incredibly moving, a tour de force in fact. 

An anatomy of a marriage, very much brought to life by the author’s luminous prose and unending passion for the life and works of Dostoyevsky. Kudos to the great Susan Sontag (who introduces the book) for her genius in plucking this gem out of a trash can.

Summer in Baden Baden, by Leonid Tsypkin. Published by Faber. $24.99

Review by Chris Saliba

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