A century after his murder, Rasputin is still widely seen as the personification of evil and the truth has remained shrouded in myth. In this acclaimed biography, Douglas Smith separates fact from fiction to reveal the real Rasputin in all his complexity – man of God, voice of peace, loyal subject, adulterer, drunkard. The result is not only a definitive biography of an extraordinary man, it is also a riveting portrait of the twilight of imperial Russia as it lurched toward catastrophe.