Translated for the first time, the best short stories by the 'modernist master' Gazdanov, author of The Spectre of Alexander Wolf

In a Paris underpass, dirty and dressed in rags, stands a silent beggar. In the evening, he walks the deserted streets; at night, he sleeps in a small, foetid crate. He is poor and he is ill, but, on reflection, he is free.

Translated into English for the first time, these six stories by modernist master Gaito Gazdanov draw on his own experiences as an exile in Paris. From the glamorous tale of a political agent setting sail from Marseilles to Constantinople, to a meditation on what it means to have - or to be - a father when a wayward stepmother is introduced, these lyrical stories have it all.

Praised by Maxim Gorky, translated with intelligence and grace by Bryan Karetnyk, The Beggar and Other Stories shows the writer of The Spectre of Alexander Wolf at his very best.

Gaito Gazdanov (1903-1971) joined the White Army aged just sixteen and fought in the Russian Civil War. Exiled in Paris from the 1920s onwards, he eventually became a nocturnal taxi-driver and quickly gained prominence on the literary scene as a novelist, essayist, critic and short-story writer, and was greatly admired by Maxim Gorky, among others. Pushkin Press also publishes the celebrated The Spectre of Alexander Wolf, The Buddha's Return and The Flight.