'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. AUTHOR: Aleksandr Skorobogatov was born in Grodno in what is now Belorussia. He is one of the most original Russophone writers of the post-communist era. An heir to Dostoevsky, Gogol, Bulgakov, Nabokov, Pelevin and Sorokin ? the surreal line of the Russian literary canon ? his novels have been published to great acclaim in Russian, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Greek, Serbian and Spanish. He won the prestigious International Literary Award Città di Penne for the Italian edition of Russian Gothic, which also received the Best Novel of the Year Award from Yunost. Cocaine (2017) won Belgium's Cutting Edge Award for 'Best Book International'. His most recent novel, Raccoon, was published by De Geus in 2020. De Tijd has called Skorobogatov 'the best Russian writer of the moment'. He lives and works in Belgium.
