Сергей Лебедев - Untraceable

“Sergei Lebedev is a marvelous writer with two rare gifts: a nobility of style and the most precise inner vision, which allows him to see and plumb the entire depth of the anthropological catastrophe that occurred in twentieth-century Russia. Lebedev has perceived what was invisible to most Soviet and post-Soviet writers.”

“One of Russia’s most interesting young novelists takes on Putin, poison and power in this unique novel; Lebedev provides a fascinating window on modern Russia.”

“A spellbinding insight into a secret world that we forget at our peril, a world of assassins, spies, patriots and poison masters whose shockingly evil decisions are made in their unwavering belief of serving a greater good. A thrilling, haunting, essential read.”

“Rich in textures, colors, sounds, and visual details… Lebedev is arguably the best of Russia’s younger generation of writers.”

“A Dantean descent… as cold and stark as a glacial crevasse, but as beautiful as one, too, with a clear poetic sensibility built to stand against the forces of erasure.”

“Astonishing… ingeniously structured around the progressive uncovering of memories of a difficult personal and national past… with a visceral, at times almost unbearable, force.”

First published in Russian in 2020 as Debutant

Copyright © 2019 Sergei Lebedev

Translation Copyright © 2021 Antonina W. Bouis

“O What Is That Sound,” Copyright © 1937 and renewed 1965 by W. H. Auden; from Collected Poems by W. H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lebedev, Sergei

[Debutant, English]

Untraceable/Sergei Lebedev; translation by Antonina W. Bouis.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-939931-90-0

Library of Congress Control Number 2020935328

I. Russia—Fiction