The Spectre of Alexander Wolf - Softcover

Gaito Gazdanov

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1782270728 ISBN 13: 9781782270720

Publisher: Pushkin Press, 2013

Synopsis

An Irish Times Book of the Year

'It will stay with you for the rest of your life' Guardian

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.

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 sojourn in Gallipoli and Contantinople (where he completed secondary school), he moved to Paris, where he spent eight years variously working as a docker, washing locomotives, and in the Citroën factory. During periods of unemployment, he slept on park benches or in the Métro. In 1928, he became a taxi driver, working nights, which enabled him to write and to attend lectures at the Sorbonne during the day. His first stories began appearing in 1926, in Russian émigré periodicals, and he soon became part of the literary scene. In 1929 he published An Evening with Claire, which was acclaimed by, among others, Maxim Gorki and the great critic Vladislav Khodasevich. He died in Munich in 1971, and is buried in the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois near Paris.

About this title

Review:

'This is a work of great potency ... I have a hunch that what's in it will stay with you for the rest of your life' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

'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

'Quick-paced, taut prose ... rendered beautifully in Karetnyk's accomplished new translation' Ivan Juritz, Independent on Sunday

'A tantalising mystery. Much more than a period piece, it is a mesmerising work of literature' Antony Beevor

'Extraordinarily good' Oliver Bullough, Literary Review

'A compulsive read, playful yet sinister, meandering yet impressively trim, old-world and modern. It is to Pushkin Press's great credit that this gorgeously restored relic... has been revived from untimely oblivion' Daniel Levine, The Millions

'It's as if the roman policier has been filtered through Dostoevsky... a finely wrought novel, tense and enigmatic, just waiting to be discovered by a filmmaker' TLS

'This is an original at work, that originality perceived as it were through a veil, as an intrigue, an enigma ... offering a perception of reality, of death and guilt and the effects of both' George Szirtes, The Times

'Splendidly translated... a mini-masterpiece' Star Tribune

'Elegantly eerie ... devastatingly atmospheric ... cool, wonder- fully fraught ... Gifted if unsung masters from the past continue to put pressure on the writers of the moment, and readers need only savour riches such as this unsettling wonder to understand why' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

'Gazdanov's work is the perfect fusion of the Russian tradition and French innovation' London Review of Books

'There are hints of Sartre s nihilism, flashes of Nabokov's émigré restlessness and several narrative tricks, which seem to prefigure postmodernism ... those interested in questioning the hidden and often-incomprehensible connections between human beings will savor this intriguing tale' Phoebe Taplin, Russia Beyond the Headlines

'Coincidence, fate, guilt, redemption, love, death and melodrama are thrillingly interwoven with irresistible style and elegance' Daily Mail

'This new translation of his most popular and accomplished novel reveals Gadzanov's masterful command of criminal plots and the psychological nuances of his characters, coupled with evocative descriptions of shifting moods and urban landscapes... Karetnyk's prose is surgically precise and elegantly taut... A literary masterpiece' --The Lady

About the Author:

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 sojourn in Gallipoli and Contantinople (where he completed secondary school), he moved to Paris, where he spent eight years variously working as a docker, washing locomotives, and in the Citroën factory. During periods of unemployment, he slept on park benches or in the Métro. In 1928, he became a taxi driver, working nights, which enabled him to write and to attend lectures at the Sorbonne during the day. His first stories began appearing in 1926, in Russian émigré periodicals, and he soon became part of the literary scene. In 1929 he published An Evening with Claire, which was acclaimed by, among others, Maxim Gorki and the great critic Vladislav Khodasevich. He died in Munich in 1971, and is buried in the Russian cemetery of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois near Paris.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1782270728
• ISBN 13: 9781782270720
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176