Isolde
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- US$11.99
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- US$11.99
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A family of Russian émigrés seeks refuge in Jazz Age-era Paris in this “enthralling . . . compellingly conflicted portrait” of love, deceit, and wayward youth by a pioneering Russian writer (Guardian)
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Odoevtseva's arresting 1929 novel of dissipated Russian youth appears in English for the first time with this stylish translation. Fourteen-year-old Russian emigree Liza meets English teenager Cromwell while both are on vacation in Biarritz, France, in the late 1920s. Cromwell falls immediately in love, claiming Liza is the precise embodiment of the heroine Isolde. Liza; her brother, Nikolai; and her friend Odette take advantage of Cromwell's wealth and car until it is time for them to return to Paris. Cromwell, whose mother does not approve of his fast lifestyle, temporarily cuts him off financially, and the Russians lose interest when he admits his lack of cash. After Liza's neglectful, selfish mother abandons the children to travel with a new lover, Nikolai convinces Liza he needs Cromwell to steal his family's money so they all can flee to Russia with important royalist documents. Liza, full of confused, fantastical memories of Russia, agrees to take part and ignores the obvious signs the plan is much more sinister until too late. Liza's overt sexualization by men (teenage and adult) is shocking to read, but Odoevtseva portrays the adolescent mix of na vet and conviction beautifully. Readers will be entertained by this measured thriller and its self-absorbed characters.
