'A tantalising mystery? a mesmerising work of literature' Antony Beevor
'Truly troubling, a weird meditation on death, war and sex' Paris Review
A superb early postmodern classic by one of Nabokov's fellow émigré writers, rediscovered after more than half a century
A man comes across a short story which recounts in minute detail his killing of a soldier, long ago - from the victim's point of view. It's a story that should not exist, and whose author can only be a dead man.
So begins the strange quest for its elusive writer: 'Alexander Wolf'.
A singular classic, The Spectre of Alexander Wolf is a psychological thriller and existential inquiry into guilt and redemption, coincidence and fate, love and death.
Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe
Translated by Bryan Karetnyk
Gaito Gazdanov (1903-1971) joined the White Army aged just sixteen and fought in the Russian Civil War. Exiled in Paris from the 1920s onwards, he eventually became a nocturnal taxi-driver and quickly gained prominence on the literary scene as a novelist, essayist, critic and short-story writer, and was greatly acclaimed by Maxim Gorky, among others.
An Irish Times Book of the Year
'It will stay with you for the rest of your life' - Nicholas Lezard, Guardian
'This is an original at work' - George Szirtes, The Times
'Quick-paced, taut prose ... rendered beautifully in Karetnyk's accomplished new translation' - Ivan Juritz, Independent on Sunday
'Elegantly eerie ... devastatingly atmospheric ... cool, wonderfully fraught' - Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
'A mesmerising work of literature' - Antony Beevor
'Truly troubling, a weird meditation on death, war, and sex... Bryan Karetnyk's new translation makes you believe in the power of the original' - Lorin Stein, Paris Review
'Coincidence, fate, guilt, redemption, love, death and melodrama are thrillingly interwoven with irresistible style and elegance' - Val Hennessy, Daily Mail
'Of all my memories, of all my life's innumerable sensations, the most onerous was that of the single murder I had committed.'
A man comes across a short story which recounts in minute detail his killing of a soldier, long ago - from the victim's point of view. It's a story that should not exist, and whose author can only be a dead man. So begins the strange quest for the elusive writer 'Alexander Wolf'. A singular classic, The Spectre of Alexander Wolf is a psychological thriller and existential inquiry into guilt and redemption, coincidence and fate, love and death.
Gaito Gazdanov (Georgi Ivanovich Gazdanov, 1903-1971), son of an Ossetian forester, was born in St Petersburg and brought up in Siberia and Ukraine, he joined Baron Wrangel's White Army in 1919 aged just sixteen, and fought in the Russian Civil War until the Army's evacuation from the Krimea in 1920. After a brief sojo
