This is a book about a brilliant violinist, whose frightening appearance and ability to extract sounds of unearthly beauty from "rough veins" led the audience into ecstasy and confusion. And the Catholic Church is outraged. This is a novel about an incredibly gifted and cruelly wounded soul who lived in a lopsided, sickly body and tried in vain for the entire duration of her earthly existence to wade through humiliation, vindictiveness and slander for love and freedom. This is a story about a society that too easily and carelessly uses its power to both muddy and elevate to Olympus.Niccolo Paganini was not the devil or the criminal that the priests tried to make him out to be. He wasn't an angel either—sarcastic, temperamental, unpredictable. But the magical charm of his playing, skill, and music were so beyond human capabilities that people refused to see him as just a virtuoso violinist. This gave rise to many legends, gossip and fictions, some still live today. Anatoly Vinogradov's novel "The Condemnation of Paganini" is based on documentary materials about the life of the great violinist and offers not only an artistic biography of the maestro, but also a wide panorama of European life at the beginning of the 19th century.