'A great Russian novel… in the grand Russian tradition' LE FIGARO
Years after the death of their beloved son, there is a knock at the door of Nikolai and Vera's apartment. Introducing himself simply as 'Sergeant Bertrand', the unknown visitor triggers a precipitous journey into the depths of the human soul. Hailed as an early masterpiece of post-Soviet literature, Russian Gothic is now available in English for the first time. Three decades after it was written, its complex portrait of grief, misogyny, violence — and love — is as fresh, shocking and relevant as ever.
THE TELEGRAPH:
Russian Gothic is part-Gogol, part-Nabokov and thoroughly magnificent. In Skorobogatov’s hands, the boundaries between reality and imagination, sanity and insanity break down. Is anything in the novel not, at least in part, the product of Nikolai’s obsessive imagination? With Skorobogatov’s skilfully ambiguous storytelling, it’s hard to say. With all its angst, terror and uncertainty, Russian Gothic has been heralded as an early masterpiece of “post-Soviet literature” — a wonderfully, startlingly disconcerting read. Given the growing violence in Russia and a new generation of war veterans, its relevance may only have increased.
