The Spectre of Alexander Wolf by Gaito Gazdanov Bryan Karetnyk (Translator)

‘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.