The Buddha's Return [Paperback]

A millionaire is killed. A golden statuette of a Buddha goes missing. A penniless student, who is afflicted by dream-like fits, is arrested and accused of murder.

In typically crisp, unfussy prose, Gazdanov's delicately balanced novel is an irresistibly hypnotic masterpiece from one of Russia's most talented émigré writers. Slipping between the menacing dream world of the student's fevered imagination, and the dark back alleys of the Paris underworld, The Buddha Returns is part detective novel, part philosophical thriller, and part love story.

[A] deliciously dark and complex tale concerning mistaken identities, moral ambiguities and deep-set yearnings. . . fresh and exciting . . . the protagonist’s metaphysical pondering and recurring mental fogs are curiously gripping, and his wistful reminiscences of old flame Catherine turn the novel into a sensual as well as a cerebral affair. — The Minneapolis Star Tribune

This is an excellent novel by any standard, and especially remarkable for joining the philosophical underpinnings of the Russians with the intrigue of a French thriller. — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Eccentric... exciting... an offbeat appeal and flashes of black humour. — Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

The Gazdanov revival… is nothing short of a literary event… comparisons to Lermontov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Proust, Celine and Camus… are entirely apt: few authors are able so seamlessly to wed the styles and thematic concerns of the great Russian psychological novelists with those of the French modernists and existentialists… Gazdanov’s thrillers offer a truly origil3Ï