Deceit (Обманъ)

“This is . . . real literature, pure & honest.”—Vladimir Nabokov

"The scintillating English-language debut from Felsen . . . [is] a fittingly volatile record of ruinous desire. — Publishers Weekly

Appearing for the first time in English, Deceit is the debut novel by Yuri Felsen, a leading modernist writer of the interwar Russian diaspora. Known by his contemporaries as 'the Russian Proust', Felsen died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz, his life & legacy destroyed by the Nazis.

Written in the form of diary, Deceit is a psychological self-portrait of an unnamed narrator, a neurasthenic & aspiring author, whose often-thwarted pursuits of his love interest & muse provide the grounds for his beautifully wrought extemporizations on love, art & human nature. 

Modulating between the paroxysms of his tormented romance & his quest for an aesthetic mode befitting of the novel he intends to write, Deceit is a remarkable work of introspective depth & psychoanalytic inquiry.

Like voyeurs, party to his most intimate thoughts, we accompany the diarist as he goes about Paris, making enraptured preparations for the materialisation of his fantasy, observing not only his eagerness, dreaminess & poetic inclinations, but also his compulsive desire to analyse his surroundings & self. 

Yet amid these ravishing flights of scrutiny we discern hints of his monomaniacal tendencies, which blind him from the true nature of his circumstances. Thus begins an exquisite game arranged by the author, wherein it falls to the reader to second-guess the essence of what really lies behind his narrative.

Foreword by Peter Pomerantsev & an Afterword by Bryan Karetnyk

Yuri Felsen was the pseudonym of Nikolai Freudenstein. In France, he became one of the leading writers of his generation, alongside the likes of Vladimir Nabokov. He was deported in 1943 & died at Auschwitz. 

Bryan Karetnyk is a British writer & translator.