The extraordinary story of one of the most fruitful friendships in modern arts and letters.

Paris, 1902: Renowned sculptor Auguste Rodin has just completed The Thinker. Rainer Maria Rilke is a delicate young visitor from Prague, broke and suffering from a case of writer’s block. When Rilke is commissioned to write a book about Rodin, everything changes. . . . You Must Change Your Life reveals one of the great stories of modern art and literature: Rodin and Rilke’s years together as master and disciple, their heartbreaking rift, and ultimately their moving reconciliation. In her vibrant debut, Rachel Corbett reveals how Rodin’s influence led Rilke to write his most celebrated poems and inspired his beloved Letters to a Young Poet. She captures the dawn of modernism with appearances by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Lou Andreas-Salomé, George Bernard Shaw, and Jean Cocteau. And she recounts the remarkable friendship of two extraordinary artists whose work continues to reverberate a century later.

Rachel Corbett is the executive editor of Modern Painters. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, The Art Newspaper, New York magazine, and others. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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