It is 1918 in S-, a small town not far from Moscow. Rozanov and his family have fled the capital because of food shortages and political unrest. In S- Rozanov nearly completes a manuscript he has been working on in secret—Polina. Polina is Apollinaria Suslova, Dostoevsky’s mistress in the 1860s and later Rozanov’s first wife. When they split up, she makes it clear that he is never to write about their relationship under any circumstances. But now, circumstances being what they are, he pins...