Yuri Felsen (né Nikolai Freudenstein, 1894–1943) was one of the most interesting and original writers of the post-Revolutionary Russian emigration. His stylistically rich, psychologically penetrating novels and stories earned him the moniker “the Russian Proust.” After his death in Auschwitz, he fell into obscurity, and his work is only now being translated into English.

Yuri Felsen

Bryan Karetnyk is a Wolfson Scholar at University College London. He has translated several major works by the émigré author Gaito Gazdanov, including The Spectre of Alexander Wolf (2013) and The Flight (2016), and is the editor and chief translator of the anthology Russian Émigré Short Stories from Bunin to Yanovsky (2017), which was shortlisted for the Read Russia Prize. He is at present preparing a translation of Yuri Felsen’s debut novel, Deceit.

Bryan Karetnyk

Extras: A Short Story by Yuri Felsen

"For a long time now I haven't been I."
— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

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"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." — Mark Twain

Fiction

Yuri Felsen (né Nikolai Freudenstein, 1894–1943) was one of the most interesting and original writers of the post-Revolutionary Russian emigration. His stylistically rich, psychologically penetrating novels and stories earned him the moniker “the Russian Proust.” After his death in Auschwitz, he fell into obscurity, and his work is only now being translated into English.

Yuri Felsen

Articles

Extras: A Short Story by Yuri Felsen