Deceit

"This is … real literature, pure and honest."
-Vladimir Nabokov

Deceit is a yet-undiscovered landmark of modernist Russian emigré literature. Once considered the Russian Proust, Yuri Felsen tells of an obsessive love affair set in interwar Paris in Deceit, an experimental novel in the form of a diary.

Following the arrival of Bolshevism in his home country, our narrator finds himself an expat living in Paris. When a Berlin-based friend and fellow Russian émigré asks him to look out for her niece, the beautiful, clever socialite Lyolya Heard, he is hesitant, but intrigued by Lyolya and her well-established reputation. Over the course of the novel, this curiosity devolves into a lustful obsession, as the hot-and-cold Lyolya sends mixed signals while pursuing other men, none of which seem to be our narrator. In rich and introspective prose, this novel in diary form speaks as truthfully about the timeless problem of unreciprocated love as it does about the fragile reality of daily life in interwar Europe.

Subtle and profound in its exploration of love, deceit and betrayal, Felsen's novel is a daring and highly original work of psychological fiction. Originally published in 1930, Deceit was recently rediscovered in Russia after much of Yuri Felsen's archive was destroyed by the Nazis.