The Spectre of Alexander Wolf

Author Gaito Gazdanov

Translated by Bryan Karetnyk

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A superb early postmodern classic by one of Nabokov’s fellow émigré writers, rediscovered after more than half a century

"This psychological novel takes stock of death, war, violence and the guilt that undergirds it all." — The New York Times Book Review

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…

$22.95

November 7, 2023

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Gaito Gazdanov (Georgi Ivanovich Gazdanov, 1903-1971) was the son of a forester. 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…