Young Stalin

Winner of the Costa Biography Award

What makes a Stalin? Was he a Tsarist agent or Lenin's bandit? Was he to blame for his wife's death? When did the killing start?

Based on revelatory research, here is the thrilling story of how a charismatic cobbler's son became a student priest, romantic poet, prolific lover, gangster mastermind and murderous revolutionary. Culminating in the 1917 revolution, Simon Sebag Montefiore's bestselling biography radically alters our understanding of the gifted politician and fanatical Marxist who shaped the Soviet empire in his own brutal image.

This is the story of how Stalin became Stalin.

About the Author

Simon Sebag Montefiore is the internationally bestselling author of a number of prize-winning books that have been published in forty-eight languages. Catherine the Great & Potemkin was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize; Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar won the BBA History Book of the Year Prize; Young Stalin won the Costa Biography Award, the LA Times Book Prize for Biography and the Grand Prix de la Biographie Politique; Jerusalem: The Biography won the JBC Book of the Year Prize and the Wenjin Book Prize in China; The Romanovs: 1613-1918 won the Lupicaia del Terriccio Book Prize.

He is the author of the Moscow Trilogy of novels: Sashenka, Red Sky at Noon and One Night in Winter, which won the Political Fiction Book of the Year Award. He is also the author of Written in History: Letters That Changed the World and the forthcoming Voices of History: Speeches That Changed the World.