Возвращение Будды

by Gaito Gazdanov, Гайто Газданов

París, década de 1930. Un estudiante ruso con pocos recursos ofrece una generosa limosna a un enigmático vagabundo que encuentra en la calle. Cuando el azar los reúne por segunda vez, el vagabundo se ha convertido en millonario gracias a una herencia inesperada, y el recuerdo del gesto de aquel joven hace que se entable entre ellos una estrecha amistad. Sin embargo, un día aparece el cuerpo sin vida del anciano, y el estudiante, que se ha convertido de pronto en heredero y principal sospechoso, es arrestado. Su salvación dependerá de una estatuilla de oro de Buda que ha desaparecido misteriosamente de la escena del crimen. En este magnífico relato de tintes metafísicos, Gazdánov nos ofrece un retrato inolvidable de la diáspora rusa y nos invita a indagar en torno al desgarro del exilio y el carácter engañoso de las apariencias.

Genres: Fiction, Russian Literature, Russia, France, Classics

640 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

Gaito Gazdanov (Russian: Гайто Газданов; Ossetian: Гæздæнты Бæппийы фырт Гайто) (1903–1971) was a Russian émigré writer of Ossetian extraction. He was born in Saint Petersburg but was brought up in Siberia and Ukraine, where his father worked as a forester. He took part in the Russian Civil War on the side of Wrangel's White Army. In 1920 he left Russia and settled in Paris, where he was employed in the Renault factories. Gazdanov's first novel — An Evening with Claire (1930) — won accolades from Maxim Gorky and Vladislav Khodasevich, who noted his indebtedness to Marcel Proust. On the strength of his first short stories, Gazdanov was decried by critics as one of the most gifted writers to begin his career in emigration.
Gazdanov's mature work was produced after World War II. His mastery of criminal plots and understanding of psychological detail are in full evidence in his two most popular novels, The Specter of Alexander Wolf and The Return of the Buddha, whose English translations appeared in 1950 and 1951. The writer "excels in creating characters and plots in which cynicism and despair remain in precarious yet convincing balance with a courageous acceptance of life and even a certain joie de vivre." In 1953, Gazdanov joined the Radio Liberty, where he hosted a program about Russian literature until his death.

Reviews

[Emiliya Bozhilova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Самота, стоплена от компанията на илюзия и призраци, всички те - обвити в дим и в нереалност, в която проблясват огънчета топлота.

Обичам Газданов точно заради пропускливите и размити граници между конкретика и абстракция, реалност и илюзия, живот и небитие, време и място, усещането за всички онези Аз, които са били или пък биха могли да бъдат, наравно с официалното ни лице пред света. Съзнанието следва много пътища наведнъж, а старият осетинец Газданов е омагьосващ и любящ водач. Дотолкова, че в неговите книги сюжетът никога не ме интересува, защото пътешествието винаги е между огледала.

***
“[…] бях съвсем като създаден за истинския и реален свят. И същевременно някакъв друг, призрачен свят ме съпътстваше винаги и навсякъде […]”

"И тогава у мен за пореден път се пораждаше странното желание да изчезна и да се разтворя като призрак насън, като валмо утринна мъгла, като нечий далечен спомен. Искаше ми се да забравя всичко, което знаех, всичко, което наистина бях и без което като че ли не можех да си представя собственото си съществуване, тази съвкупност от абсурдни и случайни обстоятелства - сякаш за да докажа на себе си, че имам не един, а няколко живота, и следователно възможностите ми изобщо не са ограничени от това, в което живея сега."

[Georgi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Поредната книга на Гайто Газданов, която очарова и опиянява с невероятната лекота на изказа, разкошния авторов език и умението да кара читателя да наднича с интерес през опушеното стъкло на спомените, носталгията, екзистенциалните размисли - с малко мистерия, с малко криминална нишка, с много човещина.

[Bookmaniac70 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Не можах да се откъсна от книгата, докато не я прочетох. Странно е колко несвързан с живота ми е сюжетът, а в същото време почувствах писането му толкова дълбоко близко. Има някаква необикновена чистота в този писател, интелектуална мощ, подчинена на дълбоко разбиране за красотата на преходното. Истинска скъпоценност!

[Yanitsa Genova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Изключително чувствен разказвач е Гайто Газданов. Обожавам това писане. Напомня ми по необясними за мен причини на "Мансардата на бляновете" на Ремарк.

[Pablo Hernandez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnífica novela del escritor ruso exiliado Gaito Gazdánov, de quien ya disfruté enormemente con El espectro de Alexander Wolf.

Brillantemente ambientada en la década de 1930, en un París de bruma y penumbra, El retorno del Buda es una novela misteriosa, onírica y extrañamente seductora, un ‘thriller metafísico’ de corte existencialista y con ciertas dosis de melancolía. Me ha encantado.

[happianooshik · Rating 4 out of 5]

The novel "The Return of Buddha" at first seemed to me a hopeless melancholy in its purest form. Gazdanov is completely different here than in “An Evening” with Claire. But in both books there is something authoritarian, lonely and “strong” - the ability to grieve alone without showing signs, while fighting sadness. I was in the right mood and I perceived the main character as absolutely normal. The concept of the norm in medicine is in principle very blurred. Rather, his "normality" for me was manifested in the fact that he let into his world an awareness of fragility and surprise; although he lived in another era, we are now facing the same thing - there is nothing predictable, life is going on, but we participate in it somehow detached, and even become more indifferent to things that seemed terrible before. At least sometimes I feel exactly like an express passenger rushing at night. And as soon as you get used to the knocking of wheels (the routine of everyday life), it seems as if you are standing still, and only sometimes at the joints of the rail the car shudders and kind of a sense of reality returns, and then all over again.

And all we can do is make a fire brighter and warm up, turning sorrows and troubles into ashes, and, if possible, fry a slice of bread on a skewer and share it with someone. It should be easy and fun, because we are so young and everything is possible, and nothing is lost.

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dostoyevsky meets Camus... yet another brilliant novel by the overlooked exilded Russian author Gaito Gazdanov.

[Goatboy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Completely enchanting. Once I was several pages into the story I never wanted to put it down. Definitely fits within the Modernist genre of truth and meaning seeking (and the ultimate impossibility of that) within the boundaries subjective consciousness. Throw in shades of Kafka and Camus, sprinkle with shifts between perceived realities, combine with a love of Paris and traversing its terrain, and why not, a small murder to solve, and you have Gazdanov's success of a novel. Some may balk at the novel's resolution, but I found it more than satisfying.

Had not heard of Gaito Gazdanov until just recently when he came up in someone's feed here at GR, but I can already tell I will be reading more by him soon.

[Jean Ra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Segunda novela de Gadzanov que leo de un tirón. En ambos casos, si bien están escritas en ruso, todas se ambientan en París, pues Gadzanov, que en la guerra civil rusa luchó del bando de los rusos blancos, se exilió en Francia. Ambos libros cuentan con protagonistas rusos, que justifica que el relato se exprese en ese lengua, y que tienen un pasado más o menos importante luchando en dicha guerra. Expatriados, se adaptan a la vida cosmopolita de la capital francesa.

En este caso se trata de un estudiante que tiene un trastorno del sueño, si bien el libro jamás lo expresa así, pues al despertarse sigue viendo visiones que corresponden a sus sueños, de modo que sueño y vigilia se mezclan para su mayor confusión. Ese estado perturbado le sirve a Gadzanov para dramatizar el conflicto entre el cuerpo y el alma. La novela lo simplifica y más o menos lo trata de loco, parece que puede llevar una vida dentro de unos cauces razonables. No es hasta que tiene un gran conflicto en el mundo real que su existencia entra en crisis.

Y es que un buen día, mientras está en los jardines de Luxemburgo, se le acerca un mendigo ruso y el narrador le da diez francos, que en los años 50 o 40 suponía una limosna muy generosa. Un par de años después el narrador descubre que este hombre que él ayudó se ha convertido en un hombre rico gracias a una inesperada herencia. Cuando por fin el antiguo mendigo se acomoda en la vida más estable y segura, ocurre un crimen y el narrador debe enfrentarse a un proceso y a los interrogatorios de la policía, sólo la aparición de una singular estatua de Buda puede salvarle.

En conjunto, Gadzanov creo que tiene buenas premisas para estas dos novelas que he leído. Sin embargo nunca termina de culminarlas de forma convincente. Por un lado sus desarrollos resultan desmañados, siempre describe alguna historia romántica que no tiene mucho relieve, y luego da la impresión que su lenguaje pretende sonar muy elegante y sofisticado y, en no pocos pasajes, resulta algo redicho.

Por lo demás este El retorno de Buda, es un libro que va de menos a más. Al principio no me interesó demasiado, mas cuando sucede la noche clave, en la que se describe un paseo nocturno de París, empapado de aire onírico, ahí la narración ya cobra vuelo y es entonces cuando se produce la investigación policial, que termina por vertebrar la narración. Supongo que este libro me habría gustado más hace unos años, en plena fiebre de David Lynch, cuando toda esta inmersión en mundos oníricos me resultaba muy potente y atractiva, a día de hoy sólo me ha ofrecido un placer lector moderado.

[Liviu · Rating 3 out of 5]

After the awesome Spectre of alexander Wolf which was a huge favorite of mine, i decided to look for anything by the author and of the 3 other books I managed to get so far in a language I can read, this was the only readable one as it is a sort of thriller with "metaphysical" overtones, though overall it is pretty banal and again whatever power it may have had at the time, did not endure and the book is not one that lives today

still readable and a reasonable page turner that kept my interest, though I kept hoping for more; the blurb describes well the subject (poor student with major psychological issues gives a lot of money - at least from his and the beggar's point of view - to an old beggar who looked proud and not fitting for his situation, meets him in a very changed situation a couple years later, became friends and partners of philosophical discussions, one night the former beggar/now well off oldster is found murdered after the student left him, the narrator is arrested but saves himself remembering a precious Buddha statue which also disappeared in the night of the murder etc etc)

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

pushkin press has another winner. and while the ending of this metephysical noir mystery slash book of paris/immigrant manners is a bit pat for the 218 page lead up (2 star, but the lead up 4) there are parts of story describing protag confronting all his dead (is he dead too? in the Central State, a wide-eyed view of his russia turned ussr [author fought for white russia when he was 16]) where there is an echo of voices and music that fades in, louder, then out, lighter and lighter, that is really cool. i guess what im sayin' is there are little gems of 'scenes', sentences, vignettes, that are as good as you will ever read, perhaps. which is something, no? as mesmerizing as a little golden buddha with his hands in the air, head tilted to the side, listening?, to nirvana, as he does his happy dance. hah. or st jerome uplifting his eyes in ecstasy as he mutilates himself with a rock to the chest.

[Marie-Therese · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slower and more contemplative than The Spectre of Alexander Wolf, the only book by Gazdanov I've previously read, this longer novel is also less well-structured, a bit baggy and dragging slightly in some spots, but with the same sense of atmosphere and almost mesmerizing prose.

Like 'The Spectre of Alexander Wolf', this is essentially a piece of crime fiction, not precisely a mystery but always mysterious, with a plot that is elusive, often escaping both the narrator and the reader. Gazdanov does not seem to be in as full control of his plot and characters here as he was in the other, earlier novel, but this is still very good and perhaps even more philosophical. The narrator is subject to fits of "madness", fugue states that mire him in imaginary situations that seem to last for days but generally take up only minutes or hours in the exterior world. These fugue states make up a fairly significant portion of the early part of the book (particularly the remarkable opening paragraphs) but then seem to go by the wayside later, as the crime aspects take over the plot. It's somewhat unclear what significance these fits of madness have beyond tormenting the narrator but they are exceedingly well drawn and often quite discomfiting.

As the crime fiction aspect rises to the forefront, death, or the end of life, as subject reigns, just as it did in 'The Spectre of Alexander Wolf'. Gazdanov again speculates on what a life is, how we should confront the end of it, and what the living owe the dead. But this novel ends on a considerably more hopeful note than the previous one.

If I were to try to describe this book in a single sentence I'd say it's a curious amalgam of Dostoevskian socio-philosophical musing, psychoanalytical fantasy, and light crime action. Which makes it sound rather a mess, which it probably really is, but it's such a thoughtful mess and such a well-written one, that the untidiness hardly matters.

[Emanuil Vidinski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Поредна добра книга на Газданов.
Благодарности на изд. Аквариус.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dislocation of a Dream

The book spoke to me first as a physical object: a beautifully bound paperback in a small squarish format, clearly printed and fitting beautifully into the hand. An attractive cover, with images of a golden Buddha, a half-naked woman, and a bridge in Paris. And short, only 220 smallish pages. I start with the facts because it is so difficult to describe the content. So here are a few more. Born in 1903, Gaito Gazdanov fought as a teenager against the Reds in the Russian Revolution; like many of his compatriots, he found refuge in Paris, and gradually established a place in the French literary scene. This novel was serialized in a Russian-language French journal between 1949 and 1950. The translation by Bryan Karetnyk seems a bit dense, but I suspect it is entirely in keeping with the avant-garde style of the time.

OK, so what is it? At least two different books, I would say. The first, beginning (almost) with the words "I died in the month of June, at night, during one of my first years abroad," is a nightmare, dominated by dreams and extended hallucinations. The second, beginning (again almost) with the words "You're under arrest" on page 133, is much more literal. Parts of it do live up the the jacket's promise of a detective story as one of the ingredients in this witches' broth, and another ingredient, the love story, begins to raise a tentative head towards the end of the book. The protagonist-narrator, an unnamed Russian history student at the Sorbonne, has already been arrested in the first part, to be interrogated in the cellars of the "Central Power," but that turns out to be one of the hallucinations to which he is periodically subject, a never-ending nightmare out of Kafka or Orwell.

Not there are not real elements in the first part also. For example, the student, approached by a beggar in the Luxembourg who addresses him in remarkably cultivated Russian, gives the man more money than he can easily afford. A year or so later, the former beggar will come into a surprising windfall and his life will be linked with that of the student from that point on. There is also a young woman named Lida, who is the mistress of the older man and the subject of the younger one's fantasies, but is herself linked to a tubercular, illiterate abattoir worker from Tunis…

But what's the point trying to summarize? You don't read this book for plot. In fact, you don't read it so much as submit to it. And, in doing so, immerse yourself in the cross-currents of mid-century literature, drawing you down into a sort of whirlpool. You will think of Camus and Sartre, certainly, and Kafka as I have mentioned, but all seasoned with a particularly Russian quirkiness that I associate with Gorky, who was apparently a great admirer. Which takes me back to the facts at the beginning: this young man fighting for a lost cause, ripped from the stability of the world he had known, exiled in a strange but seductively heady city… what else would he write about but dislocation?

[Kirsty Cabot · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting mystery story focused on a Russian student in Paris who is prone to fits of uncontrollable daydreaming which are as if real, blurring the lines between reality and dream.

A man is murdered and the student is charged with his murder - but did he do it?

I enjoyed this book, it was an interesting read with a good pace and language. The characters were intriguing, and the genre can certainly be accurately described as noir.

[Eugenia Karpova · Rating 5 out of 5]

Медлительная и размеренная, полная глубины, желания ждать, искать - и не предавать, в конце концов, этому слишком большого значения. И выходит так, что Гайто Газданов один из наиболее мне близких писателей.

[Marc Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic wee book. I'm starting to think Gazdanov could become one of my favourite authors

[Jodi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nachdem mich schon das Phantom um Alexander Wolf fasziniert hat, war ich gespannt auf meinen nächsten Gasdanov. Und auch im Buddha geht es um ein Phantom, zumindest fühlte ich mich oft an Alexander Wolf erinnert, ohne dass hier die Geschichte nacherzählt wird.

Dass die beiden Bücher tatsächlich als Geschwister gehandhabt werden, verrät das Nachwort. Dieses fand ich persönlich übrigens sehr aufschlussreich und half mir, den Inhalt des Buddhas und auch des Alexanders besser zu verstehen. Ich rate deshalb dazu, nach der Lektüre sich auch noch das Nachwort zu Gemüte zu führen.

Aber ich greife vor. Denn vor dem Nachwort kommt logischerweise das Buch und das ist genauso speziell wie der Alexander Wolf. Oftmals sogar richtig kafkaesk, aber eben auf eine russische Weise. Wer aufgrund des Rückentextes einen Krimi erwartet, der wird jedoch enttäuscht werden. Einerseits tritt der erwähnte Mord erst in der zweiten Hälfte der Handlung auf, andererseits ist dieser eher Zweck zur Erfüllung als eigentliches Thema.

Worum es wirklich geht? Um die Innenansichten eines jungen Mannes, der zwischen Realität und Traumwelt hin und her pendelt. Der sich verzweifelt an etwas festzuhalten versucht, kein Phantom werden will.

Geschrieben eher anspruchsvoll, kein Werk für ungeübte Leser. Aber sprachlich sehr schön ausgearbeitet. Ich kann mir vorstellen, dass es nicht einfach ist, Gasdanov zu übersetzen. Auch deshalb immer wieder gerne, bin schon auf das nächste Buch dieses Autoren gespannt, das mir in die Hände fallen wird.

[Matthias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as good as The Spectre of Alexander Wolf by the same author, but well worth reading. Here, the narrator dies on the first page. What follows is a double existence. I think a challenging way to interpret this is to read the book's story as an attempt to overcome a drug addiction. But again, this is very formal literature, and few will like it.

[Alena Gradoboeva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Получше, чем Вечер у Клэр, но все равно скучно.

[Jo the Bro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Angenehm geschrieben aber Plot undurchsichtig und verwirrend

[Lenni · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Wow! Wow! Gasdanow ist unglaublich

[Ostap Bender · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the book’s inner cover: “A millionaire is killed. A golden statuette of a Buddha goes missing. A penniless student, who is afflicted by dream-like fits, is arrested and accused of murder. Slipping between the menacing dream world of the student’s fevered imagination, and the dark back alleys of the Paris underworld, The Buddha’s Return is part detective novel, part philosophical thriller and part love story.”

My take: this is a book to read for its profound philosophy, not necessarily the framework of the plot it’s hung on. There is the sense that the protagonist is out of touch with reality because he sometimes loses his grip on things, an example of which is imagining being imprisoned and interrogated for a crime against the state, and also believing he’s died before. However, I believe one of Gazdanov’s points is that he is actually more in touch with reality than the rest of us – understanding that this world around is illusory, that our individual lives are transient, and that we live in each and every thing around us, as part of a larger whole. Another is to point out the chance that is part of all of our lives, the arbitrariness of fate, and the randomness of being born into privilege in a capitalist world that is not a meritocracy. Pretty impressive stuff, particularly for 1949-50.

Quotes:
On death, and art:
“I tried to envisage everything my mind could envelop in the most comprehensive terms possible – the world as it was right now: the dark sky above Paris, its enormous expanse, thousands upon thousands of kilometers of ocean, the dawn over Melbourne, late evening in Moscow, the rushing of sea foam along the shores of Greece, the midday heat in the Bay of Bengal, the diaphanous movement of air across the earth, and time’s unstoppable march into the past. How many people had died while I had been standing there by the window, how many were now in their last agony as I had this very thought, how many bodies were writhing about in the throes of death – those for whom the inexorable final day of their lives had already dawned? I closed my eyes and before me appeared Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, and for whatever reason I immediately recalled his final epistle, in which he stated he could write no more. As I remembered these lines I felt a chill run down my spine: this hand that was now incapable of writing had carved David and Moses from marble – and yet his genius was dissolving into that very same nothingness from which it had come; each of his works an apparent victory over death and time.”

On demagogues:
“I also thought how state ethics, taken to their logical paroxysm – as the culmination of some collective delirium – would inevitably lead to an almost criminal notion of authority, and that, in such periods of history, power truly belongs to ignorant crooks and fanatics, tyrants and madmen…”

On lost love:
“How could I have thought then that I was unworthy of all this – the summer evenings, the intimacy with Catherine, her voice, her eyes and her diaphanous love? And how was it that these shadowy images, these descents into oblivion, my own shifting silhouette and the swaying instability of my life could seem so overwhelming that, fearing the inescapable illusoriness of existence, I would step into this abstract darkness, leaving that voice and these words behind, on the other side of this hateful expanse? Why did I do it?”

And this one, that sense of the moment gone:
“I had attended this concert at the Pleyel with Catherine; as she sat next to me, her misty tenderness had seemed to accentuate the sense of the melody, heightening the theme of memory in Kreisler’s playing. Attempting to translate the movement of sounds into my poverty of words, the meaning was approximately thus: that the feeling of happy plenitude is short-lived and illusory, it will leave only regret and as such it is sorrowful yet alluring warning. Because of this I knew that the moment could never be repeated, and I keenly sensed, perhaps because it too could never be repeated, the magic of the violin.”

On meaninglessness:
“I knew everyone on this street, just as I knew every odour, the look of every building, the glass of every window pane, and the lamentable imitation of life, intrinsic to each of its inhabitants, which never revealed its greatest secret: what inspired these people in the lives they led? What were their hopes, their desires, their aspirations, and to what end did each of them obediently, patiently repeat the same thing day after day? What could there be in all this – apart from some biological law that they obeyed unknowingly and unthinkingly? What had summoned them to life out of apocalyptic nothingness? The accidental and perhaps momentary union of two human bodies one evening or late one night a few dozen years ago?”

On oneness:
“…or was it that I was part of some vast human collective and the impenetrable membrane that separated me from other people and contained my individuality had suddenly lost its impermeability, allowing something foreign to rush in, like waves crashing into the crevice of a cliff?”

“Later I developed a strange and abiding desire – to vanish into thin air, like a phantom in a dream, like a patch of morning mist, like someone’s distant memory. I wanted to forget everything, everything that constituted me, beyond which it seemed impossible to imagine my own existence, this aggregate of absurd, random conventions – as though I desired to prove to myself that I had not one life, but many, and consequently that the conditions in which I found myself in no way limited my options.”

On religion:
“I once had occasion to read a most edifying encyclical by a pope – I forget which – who argued that one must know how to interpret the Church’s views on wealth and poverty correctly. Specifically, there could be no talk of donating one’s wealth, or even a tenth of it, to the poor: this was a misinterpretation. The tenth pertained to income; capital was never subject to Christian taxation. This is patently ridiculous, and if there is a hell, then I hope this pope, while he’s sat there, roasting for centuries in some gigantic frying pan, has found the time to realize his grievous error concerning the Church’s stance on property.”

[Antonia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Гайто Газданов напуска Русия през 1920 г., когато е на седемнайсет години и се установява трайно в Париж, където упражнява редица нискоквалифицирани професии, но редом с това извлича от своите преживявания всяка формула на житейската есенция, за да я пресъздаде в творчеството си. В романите му са очертани съвсем бледи сюжетни контури. Клетките на плътта им са захранени с интензивни съзерцания, тъмнина и пленителен език.

“Завръщането на Буда”, последната издадена негова книга, отново е двигател на характерните за Газданов интелектуални бдения. В нея са описани бурните премеждия в съзнанието на млад студент в Париж, който периодично изпада в делириумни състояния, колкото абсурдни, толкова и реални. Впечатляващо е колко гладко Газданов ни кара да проникнем между психическите продукции на реалността в дълбините на душевността и достоветната външна реалност. В микросюжетите на тези халюцинации се отличават познатите вибрации на “Процесът” на Кафка и “Покана за екзекуция” на Набоков. Тук обаче те функционират само като вестоносци на предстоящото, защото, за разлика от абсурдните безизходици, в който са заклещени героите на Кафка и Набоков, Газданов е по-милостив към героя си, като полага в ядрото на историята по-екзистенциални и фолософски теми, че дори и умерен трилър елемент.

Това, което ми се струва присъщо за романите на Газданов е, че те са покрити с фино мрачно було. Протагонистите му са сякащ изтръгнати от стабилността на света, който са познавали и се колебаят кражейки между познатото и непознатото, между реалността, рефлектираща в съзнанието на героя, и външните обстоятелства, в които е поставен, с алюзията че принадлежност не откриват никъде.

“…бях съвсем като създаден за истинския и реален свят. И същевременно някакъв друг, призрачен свят ме съпътстваше винаги и навсякъде…”

Газданов обича вдълбочените странствания на мисълта към недрата на човешката личност, затова сюжетите присъстват ефимерно в романите му. По-изпъкващо в прозата му е виртуозното боравене с езика — разкошен, опианяващ и обогатяващ възприятията на четящия.

[Kobra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh, boy. Много странна книга в стил "Страданията на младия Вертер" срещат "Чужденецът" на Камю. През цялото време главният герой, млад руснак, живеещ в Париж, ми напомняше на героя от "Чужденецът". Един объркан шизофреник (частта с умственото умопомрачение и постоянните пристъпи на видения нямаше абсолютно никакъв смисъл откъм движение на историята за мен) живее незначителен и живот в ниските прослойки на обществото и се опитва да го осмисли по някакъв начин. Крими линията беше приятно разнообразие в иначе монотонното повествование, което се състои предимно от философски разсъждения, които не достигат до кой знае какви изводи, освен че любовта е най-важна и бла-бла. В крайна сметка успява чрез силата на волята си да се отърве от умопомрачението и да преобърне животга си, благодарение на любовта, кояго го спасява. Определено романът не беше моето нещо, макар да имаше някои интересни моменти и разсъждения в контекста на периода, в който се развива действието.

[Konstantin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have no idea what this was about. The summary makes this seem like it's a thriller, but really it's just 150 pages of cryptic hallucinations followed by 50 of the most boring and clearly answered murder "mystery" ever. It was kind of fun to have a book that is so weird to begin with end up with a very obvious murder case that is solved without any tension whatsoever. There are themes of russian diaspora, Buddhism, kafkaesque bureaucracy, insanity, Jungian archetypes, but none of them are properly developed or made obvious at all.

Leo, my friend from the book club I read this for, said "I had the feeling that this book was not written to entertain me, and I kind of liked that". I think that pretty much sums it up.

[Chris Linehan · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were interesting parts in this book. Gazdanov has a good sense of satire and political insight. Occasionally he has a deeply penetrating philosophical barb. I'm glad to have read the book, but I don't feel compelled to read another of his works any time soon.

[Dragana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkable, fascinating, this is partly a detective thriller, partly a philosophical novel, partly a love story, so elegantly intertwined together.

[poesielos]

DNF S. 74 (33%)

[Joel Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not Gazdanov's best