The Spectre of Alexander Wolf

The Spectre of Alexander Wolf
Author: Gaito Gazdanov
Publisher: Pushkin Press Classics
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2023-11-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1805330233

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 death

Night Roads

Night Roads
Author: Гаито Газданов
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 269
Release: 2009-04-27
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0810125587

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.

The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones

The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones
Author: Jack Wolf
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 561
Release: 2013-03-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0143123823

The explosive and controversial debut novel by a major new voice in fiction Meet Tristan Hart, a brilliant young man of means. The year is 1751, and at the age of twenty he leaves home to study medicine at the great hospital of St. Thomas in London. It will be a momentous year for the intellectually ambitious Mr. Hart, who, in addition to being a student of Locke and Descartes and a promising young physician, is also, alas, psychotic. He is obsessed with the nature of pain and medically preventing it, but—equally strong and much harder to control—is his obsession with causing it. Desperate to understand his deviant desires before they are his undoing, he uses the new tools of the age—reason and science and skepticism—to plumb the depths of his own dark mind. Profoundly imaginative, unexpectedly funny, and with a strange but moving love story at its heart, The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones is an oddly beautiful and daring novel about the relationship between the mind and body, sex, madness, pain, and the existence of God.

Sound

Sound
Author: T. M. Wolf
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2012
Genre: Boatyards
ISBN: 9780571272273

Returning to a New Jersey shore that differs from the home he remembers, graduate school dropout Cincy immerses himself in music and takes a boatyard management job while obsessing about a woman named Vera.

Spectre

Spectre
Author: William Shatner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2002-02-21
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0743454081

Retired and happily in love, Kirk believes his adventuring days are over. But as he returns to Earth for the first time since his apparent "death" upon the Enterprise-B, events elsewhere in the galaxy set in motion a mystery that may provide Kirk with his greatest challenge yet. The Enterprise-E, under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, is exploring an unstable region of space on a scientific mission of vital concern to Starfleet when they discover the last thing they ever expected to find: a lonely, battle-scarred vessel that is instantly recognizable to every member of Picard's crew. Five years after being lost with all hands in the Delta Quadrant, the Starship Voyager has come home! The commander of Voyager, one Tom Paris, explains that Captain Kathryn Janeway and half of the original crew is dead, but if that is true, who is the mysterious woman who has kidnapped Kirk back on Earth, pleading with him to assist her against a threat to the entire Federation? All is not as it seems, and soon Kirk is forced to confront the hideous consequences of actions taken more than a hundred years prior, as well as his own inner doubts. After years of quiet and isolation, does he still have what it takes to put things right-and join with Captain Picard to save the lives of everyone aboard a brand-new Enterprise? An unforgettable saga peopled by old friends and ancient enemies, Star Trek: Spectre propels Kirk on a journey of self-discovery every bit as harrowing as the cataclysmic new adventure that awaits him.