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About Isolde
Product Description A family of Russian émigrés seeks refuge in Paris in this hypnotically dark classic of love, deceit, and wayward youth by a pioneering Russian writer Left to her own devices in Biarritz, fourteen-year-old Russian Liza meets an older English boy, Cromwell, on a beach. He thinks he has found a magical, romantic beauty and insists upon calling her Isolde; she is taken with his Buick and ability to pay for dinner and champagne. Disaffected and restless, Liza, her brother Nikolai, and her boyfriend Andrei enjoy Cromwell’s company in restaurants and jazz bars after he follows Liza back to Paris—until his mother stops giving him money. When the siblings’ own mother abandons them to follow a lover to Nice, the group falls deeper into its haze of alcohol, and their darker drives begin to take over. First published in 1929, Isolde is a startlingly fresh, disturbing portrait of a lost generation of Russian exiles by Irina Odoevtseva, a major Russian writer who has never before appeared in English. Review "Enthralling . . . a compellingly conflicted portrait."—Guardian Review"In a literary scene dominated by men, Irina Odoevtseva offered a remarkably frank depiction of female sexuality—as if Annabel Leigh, or even Dolores Haze, had the chance to write her own painful story."—Times Literary Supplement"Lovely but also ominous . . . a gem of a novel, intensely attractive and bitter at the same time."—Spectator Review Irina Odoyevtseva charts out a new course for women's literature. The story of a 14-year-old girl's attitude to life, and for the female image thus emerging, reveal to us something hitherto unknown. --Vladimir Varshavsky About the Author Irina Odoevtseva was a Russian novelist, poet, translator and memoirist. Born in 1885 in Riga, then part of the Russian Empire, she moved to St Petersburg in 1914 and there enrolled in the literary faculty of the Institute of the Living Word and established herself as a poet. In 1922, Odoevtseva fled Russia with her husband, the poet Georgy Ivanov. After a brief period in Berlin, the couple settled in Paris, where Odoevtseva wrote short fiction and several successful novels, including Angel of Death (1927) and Isolde (1929). Later, she had great success with her memoirs On the Banks of the Neva (1967) and On the Banks of the Seine (1983). She returned to Russia in 1987 at the age of ninety-one to a rapturous reception. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. i "This is what the sea was like when Isolde sailed upon it.” Cromwell shut his book and looked out over the horizon. “This is what the sea was like when Isolde sailed upon it, to Tristan.” The sky grew pink with the approaching sunset. Wave ran over wave. The wind ruffled the shaggy towels laid out on the beach. Round shells glinted dimly in the grey sand. And far away in the distance, right on the horizon, a bright white sail stood out against the silky blue sea. “This is what the sea was like…” A seagull flew over his head with a cry, almost clipping him with the sharp tip of its wing. Cromwell flinched. “What’s come over me?” he thought angrily, blushing with embarrassment. “I’m flinching like a little girl! I’ll soon be scared of mice at this rate.” He tossed the book away and turned over to lie on his back. France was to blame. Yes, France was most definitely to blame. He was never like this at home. He cast his mind back to the green fields of Scotland, to the castle with its grand square rooms, to Eton, where he had boarded that winter term. You wouldn’t have caught him flinching there! But here in Biarritz life was completely different—mad, fun, even a little seedy. Yes, that was the word: seedy. And there was the perpetual rush of the ocean. And the bracing air. And these stupid books. And the eternal waiting, the constant premonition of love… He scanned the horizon again. The enormous sun was lowering itself slowly into the rose-tinged waves. And the
