Schwarze Schwäne

Gaito Gasdanov's novels have been hailed by critics as stellar moments in literary history - now his best stories are appearing in German for the first time.

Comrade Brack "should have been born before our time and in a different historical setting," and the exiled Russian Pavlov decides to "shoot himself in the Bois de Boulogne on the very twenty-fifth of August. "Black Swans" brings together Gaito Gasdanov's best stories, spanning the pre-revolutionary period, the Soviet era, and French exile. As in the novels, in the stories the weariness of life and violence lie very close to beauty and vulnerability. And always "one immerses oneself in a style whose flawlessness is disarming, and gets to know people for whose soul landscapes one no longer has any reliable maps" (Die Zeit).