A Scandal in Konigsberg 9780241767887 Hardback

ATimesBest Book of the Year 2025A remarkable micro-history from the author ofThe SleepwalkersandRevolutionary Spring’It takes a confident historian to write a short book the story is distilled to its powerful essence; he knows precisely whats important This small book is many things, but for me what shines brightest is a tale of two renegade preachers who understood women and love’- Gerard de Groot,The TimesNow part of the Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad, the former Prussian and German port of Knigsberg has always been a somewhat sleepy place, doomed to be famous for having once been the residence of Immanuel Kant. But in the late 1830s, just for a short while, it became famous for all the wrong reasons.Christopher Clarks brilliant new book is the result of many years of fascination with this strange case. Sensational accusations were bandied about, implying that beneath the towns somnolent surface there were dark erotic currents and wrenching betrayals of trust. For the Prussian authorities this was just the sort of moral collapse they feared most. In the aftermath of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, which had unsettled a generation, every lapse could be seen as the harbinger of new storms.A Scandal in Knigsbergbeautifully brings to life a time and a place that we would now situate in the tranquil Biedermeier years between the seismic upheavals of the 1810s and 1840s. But there is a timeless quality to this small vortex of turbulence, in which spiritual hunger, vanity, professional rivalry, sexual incontinence, naivety and sheer human waywardness threatened to tear a city apart.