Author: Yuri Felsen
Translator: Brian Karetnyk
Publisher: Prototype
Paperback
Staff Pick! Dan says...
One of the pleasures of being a bookseller is being able to be a small part of a fantastic, unlikely story. This year it was my pleasure to support the sterling work of translator and archivist Bryan Karetnyk in his resurrection of a forgotten, marginal figure from the post-revolutionary Russian diaspora. Yuri Felsen was a writer of rare talent, whose legacy (and life) was obliterated by the grotesque National Socialist Machine. At the time, many (not without cause) likened Felsen to the great Proust. Owing to his tragic fate, Felsen was largely forgotten until his resurrection through the efforts of Bryan and the fantastic Prototype.
Deceit is a gentle, funny work about a listless romantic obsession. It has a dreamlike, almost timeless quality. It is a work that we should not be reading, but we are. What a joy.