The Precipice

Boris Raisky can repeat a teacher’s words exactly—and still have no idea how to solve the problem on the blackboard. He has been watching the man’s snuff-spattered shirt and the red seal on his waistcoat instead.

In nineteenth-century Russia, Boris moves between the family estate where he grew up and the rented rooms he keeps in St. Petersburg. By thirty, he has left the civil service, read his way through tales and philosophies, and found no settled purpose; even his friends cannot agree whether he is generous, vain, or impossible to trust. His attention catches on faces, forests, stories—anything but the practical work expected of him. Yet he fears being dismissed as an idler, convinced there is something in him no one else understands. What will become of a man who can imagine whole worlds, but cannot find his place in one?

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