The Spectre of Alexander Wolf

(Paperback)

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'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 migr 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.

Reviews

'A work of great potency ... it punches very much above its weight, and I have a hunch that what's in it will stay with you for the rest of your life' - Nicholas Lezard

'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

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

'Elegantly eerie ... devastatingly atmospheric ... cool, wonderfully fraught' - Eileen Battersby

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

Author Bio

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.