Longlist
The Rebel's Clinic The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon
Adam Shatz
Rudolf Nureyev
The Life
Julie Kavanagh
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 l961; sparked Rudimania across the globe; gave his rabid sexuality full reign; 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.
Julie Kavanagh’s uncompromising and magnificent biography, ten years in the making, is a brilliant tribute to a superstar the world can never forget.
- First published:
- 2007
- Published by:
- Fig Tree
- Length:
- Hardcover 787 pages
About the author
Julie Kavanagh trained as a dancer at the Royal Ballet School, and is the author of Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton. She has worked as ballet critic of The Spectator; Arts Editor of Harpers & Queen; and London Editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. She is married to the ex-Royal Ballet dancer, now dance film maker, Ross MacGibbon, and has two sons.
