Simon Sebag Montefiore (1965) is an English historian and novelist, a well-known and beloved author in Estonia, who has visited our festival before. Montefiore has written books on historical persons, families and history-packed locations, and his focus has often been on the imperial history of our eastern neighbour. The first kind include two books about Stalin and one about Potemkin, while the second type of works is represented by the grandiose The Romanovs 1613-1918 (2016), and the third by Jerusalem: The Biography (2011). His most recent Estonian translation, The World: A Family History of Humanity, originally published in 2022, draws particularly extensively from history, combining the motives of family and kinship from the early days of humankind to the present day. The work is filled with the most famous and obscure historical figures, from Alexander the Great to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, from Attila to Sigmund Freud, from Ivan the Terrible to David Bowie. The reader encounters brutal rulers and their opponents, politicians and philosophers, artists and doctors, men of faith and men of science, lovers and beloveds, and through them universal human forces: cruelty, romance and ingenuity.
Performs at
| Date | Event Name | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Friday, 30 May at 18:00 | Simon Sebag Montefiore and Marek Tamm | Estonian Writers’ Union |
