Gaito Gazdanov, Bryan Karetnyk "The Spectre of Alexander Wolf"
Pushkin Press | English | December 17, 2013 | ISBN: 1782270086 | 192 pages | azw, epub, lrf, mobi | 3,4 mb
The Spectre of Alexander Wolf starts with the narrator describing his memory of the day he murdered a stranger. He also goes on to say that this act has haunted him every passing day since that moment, and also that despite this fact, he could not have done anything different. This event told by the narrator, happened during the Russian Civil War where he describes himself as a young soldier in southern Russia. After two and half days without sleep he becomes separated from the rest of his troop.
He sets out in the direction he presumes they've gone and not long after is chased down by a Cossack, it is this that leads to the moment he describes as murder, but is really self defense. He was sixteen years old when this occurred, and from that moment on he will be haunted by it.
Flash forward many years and whilst in Paris, he reads a short story, that describes exactly what happened, and in such detail that it could have only been written by someone who was there. The problem is that he and the murdered Cossack were the only ones there.
This impossibility sets him out on a mission to find the author, to find out if. This will lead him...
This book manages to pack in a lot between it’s 178 pages, it manages to be a detective tale, romance, and memoir; yet still ask those questions about existence, still points it’s metaphysical finger at the world at large. This is a book that absorbs you, makes you want to savor it. Whether it’s the opening scene, or the way the book develops this is a book for cold dark nights, read whilst cosied up somewhere warm
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