Drawing together episodes of rich atmosphere, this novel is as deep and brooding as the Paris nights that serve as its backdrop. Russian writer Gaito Gazdanov arrived in Paris, as so many did, between the wars and would go on, with this fourth novel, to give readers a crisp rendering of a living city changing beneath its people’s feet. Night Roads is loosely based on the author’s experiences as a cab driver in those disorienting, often brutal years, and the narrator moves from episode to episode, holding court with many but sharing his mind with only a few. His companions are drawn straight out of the Parisian past: the legendary courtesan Jeanne Raldi, now in her later days, and an alcoholic philosopher who goes by the name of Plato. Along the way, the driver picks up other characters, such as the dull thinker who takes on the question of the meaning of life only to be driven insane. The dark humor of that young man’s failure against the narrator’s authentic, personal explorations of the same subject is captured in this first English translation. With his trademark émigré eye, Gazdanov pairs humor with cruelty, sharpening the bite of both.

Night Roads: A Novel (European Classics)

Literature & Fiction

Gazdanov, Gaito

Literary

Northwestern University Press

Originally published in 1930, Gaito Gazdanov’s An Evening with Claire is a masterpiece of Russian émigré literature. Written when its author was just twenty-six—with the memories of his harsh years in the Russian civil war still hauntingly vivid in his mind—An Evening with Claire is a psychological novel that is both grand and introspective. Gazdanov’s fist novel is at once an intimate and sensual account of a young man’s coming-of-age, and a tribute to the shattered dreams of the early twentieth century. As Jodi Daynard writes in her marvelously informed introduction, An Evening with Claire “presented pre-revolutionary Russia and the cataclysmic events which destroyed it in a manner both real and wistful, unregretful yet tender.”

An Evening With Claire

Genre Fiction

ARDIS

Written when its author was just twenty-six―with the memories of his harsh years in the Russian civil war still hauntingly vivid in his mind―An Evening with Claire is a psychological novel that is both grand and introspective. Gazdanov’s fist novel is at once an intimate and sensual account of a young man’s coming-of-age, and a tribute to the shattered dreams of the early twentieth century. As Jodi Daynard writes in her marvelously informed introduction, An Evening with Claire “presented pre-revolutionary Russia and the cataclysmic events which destroyed it in a manner both real and wistful, unregretful yet tender.”

An Evening with Claire: A Novel

United States

The Overlook Press

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. Of all my memories, of all my life's innumerable sensations, the most onerous was that of the single murder I had committed.' Pushkin Collection editions feature a spare, elegant series style and superior, durable components. The Collection is typeset in Monotype Baskerville, litho-printed on Munken Premium White Paper and notch-bound by the independently owned printer TJ International in Padstow. The covers, with French flaps, are printed on Colorplan Pristine White Paper. Both paper and cover board are acid-free and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified.

The Spectre of Alexander Wolf (Pushkin Collection)

Pushkin Press

A millionaire is killed. A golden statuette of a Buddha goes missing. A penniless student, who is afflicted by dream-like fits, is arrested and accused of murder. In typically crisp, unfussy prose, Gazdanov's delicately balanced novel is an irresistibly hypnotic masterpiece from one of Russia's most talented émigré writers. Slipping between the menacing dream world of the student's fevered imagination, and the dark back alleys of the Paris underworld, The Buddha Returns is part detective novel, part philosophical thriller, and part love story.

The Buddha's Return (Pushkin Collection)

Pushkin Collection

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.

While summering on the French Riviera, the young Seryozha secretly becomes the lover of the much older Liza - who is also his father's mistress. As autumn approaches, they reluctantly part: Liza to return to Paris, Seryozha to take up his studies at university in London. When he finds out about their affair, Seryozha's father attempts to convince Liza to leave his son, for the sake of the boy's own happiness. She finally gives in - but a sudden, fatal catastrophe changes everything... Gazdanov's second novel is proof of his wide-ranging talents: written before his celebrated noir experiments The Spectre of Alexander Wolf and The Buddha's Return, The Flight is a lyrical 'chamber play' in prose. Mixing psychological drama, illicit romance and moments of both comedy and pathos, it is a modernist take on the traditional Russian nineteenth-century realist novel epitomised by Tolstoy - with distinct echoes of Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

The Flight (Pushkin Collection)

Romance

Translated for the first time, the best short stories by the 'modernist master' Gazdanov, author of The Spectre of Alexander Wolf. In a Metro underpass, bald and dressed in rags, stands a silent beggar. In the evening, he walks the deserted streets of Paris; at night, he sleeps in a small, foetid crate vacated by the death of another beggar. He is poor and he is ill, but, on reflection, he is free. Never published before in English, this marvellously translated collection of tightly written, lyrical works represent marvellously compact miniatures of all the major strands that Gazdanov explores in his novels. The senselessness of life, the nature of fate, and the richness of the inner life - these brilliant and moving stories have it all.

The Beggar and Other Stories (Pushkin Collection)

The lyrical first novel of youth and love by acclaimed modernist master Gaito Gazdanov, author of The Spectre of Alexander Wolf\nTwo old friends meet nightly in Paris, trading conversational barbs and manoeuvring around submerged feelings. Throughout the ten years of their separation, thoughts of Claire lingered persistently in Kolya's mind. As the imagined romance finally becomes real, Kolya is thrown into recollections of formative moments from his youth in Russia, from his solitary early years through military school and service in the White Army in the Civil War, all leading to this union with Claire.\nThe first novel by the celebrated Russian master Gaito Gazdanov, An Evening with Claire is a lyrical, finely crafted portrait of a lost innocence and a vanished era.

An Evening with Claire (Pushkin Collection)

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.

The Spectre of Alexander Wolf (Pushkin Press Classics)

Pushkin Press Classics

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gazdanov, Gaito. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gazdanov, Gaito

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gazdanov, Gaito. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Night Roads: A Novel (European Classics)

An Evening With Claire

An Evening with Claire: A Novel

The Spectre of Alexander Wolf (Pushkin Collection)

The Buddha's Return (Pushkin Collection)

The Spectre of Alexander Wolf (Pushkin Collection)

The Flight (Pushkin Collection)

The Beggar and Other Stories (Pushkin Collection)

An Evening with Claire (Pushkin Collection)

The Spectre of Alexander Wolf (Pushkin Press Classics)