The Spectre of Alexander Wolf

'A tantalising mystery... a mesmerising work of literature' Antony Beevor'Truly troubling a weird meditation on death war and sex' Paris ReviewA superb early postmodern classic by one of Nabokov's fellow émigré writers rediscovered after more than half a centuryA 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 globeTranslated by Bryan KaretnykGaito 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.