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SERGEANT BERTRAND

Aleksandr Skorobogatov

'A great Russian novel... in the grand Russian tradition' LE FIGARO

Years after the death of their beloved son, there is a knock at the door of Nikolai and Vera's apartment. Introducing himself simply as 'Sergeant Bertrand', the unknown visitor triggers a precipitous journey into the depths of the human soul. Hailed as an early masterpiece of post-Soviet literature, Russian Gothic is now available in English for the first time. Three decades after it was written, its complex portrait of grief, misogyny, violence - and love - is as fresh, shocking and relevant as ever. Aleksandr Skorobogatov was born in Grodno in what is now Belorussia. He is one of the most original Russophone writers of the post-communist era. An heir to Dostoevsky, Gogol, Bulgakov, Nabokov, Pelevin and Sorokin - the surreal line of the Russian literary canon - his novels have been published to great acclaim in Russian, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, French, Italian, Greek, Serbian and Spanish. He won the prestigious International Literary Award Città di Penne for the Italian edition of Russian Gothic, which also received the Best Novel of the Year Award from Yunost. Cocaine (2017) won Belgium's Cutting Edge Award for 'Best Book International'. His most recent novel, Raccoon, was published by De Geus in 2020. De Tijd has called Skorobogatov 'the best Russian writer of the moment'. He lives and works in Belgium.

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Book Published 2023-05-09 by Old Street Publishing

Comments

Yunost: 'Best Novel of the Year', Russia, 1991 Overall Winner of the XXXIVth International Literary Award 'Città di Penne', Italy, 2012 Medal of the President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano, Italy, 2012

Skorobogatov intertwines sexual obsession, jealousy, fear, aggression and the drive to abandonment with one another, in a work that has strong undertones of the French writer-philosopher Georges Bataille; a dark book that plays with the tempting and at the same time repulsive connection between the erotic and violence, love and hate, reality and nightmare.

With all its angst, terror and uncertainty, RUSSIAN GOTHIC has been heralded as an early masterpiece of 'post-Soviet literature' - a wonderfully, startlingly disconcerting read. Given the growing violence in Russia and a new generation or war veterans, its relevance may only have increased.

Skorobogatov tells his tale from within the madness of his main character. What is truth and what is only taking place in the head of Nikolaj? The short, feverish chapters carry you away. Nikolaj is caught up in his jealousy and the reader is caught with him.

It has been many years since such an original work found its way from Russia to this country. Skorobogatov writes exceptionally well. I read Sergeant Bertrand in one sitting, and after I had finished it, it continued to hold me in its grip. It is an impressive debut that whets the reader's appetite for more to come.

US: Rare Bird ; Dutch (Cossee) ; Greek (Kastaniotis expired) ; French (Autrement expired) ; Italian (e/o expired) ; Portugal (Estrofes & Versos expired) ; Russian (Yunost)

Sensational debut.

Sergeant Bertrand is an exceptionally fascinating and accomplished novel that skillfully intertwines reality, dream, delirium and madness.

A dark masterpiece of the absurd

A violent, drunken, hallucinatory window into post-Soviet fiction Intense and near-nauseating, Aleksandr Skorobogatov's slim novel Russian Gothic is part-Gogol, part-Nabokov and thoroughly magnificent Read more...

A great Russian novel... in the grand Russian tradition

A thrilling novel about guilt and atonement.

Heart-rending realism and brutality

A short and great novel about madness, in the tradition of Gogol's Diary of a Madman

RUSSIAN GOTHIC joins the tradition of tales told from the perspective of unhinged narrators, from Gogol's DIARY OF A MADMAN (1835) to Bret Easton Ellis's AMERICAN PSYCHO (1991). Despite what we're primed to expect, it's about violence arising from sexual jealousy rather than a cold-blooded serial killer. But Skorobogatov's study of a tormented mind unable to parse dreams from reality is every bit as unnerving.