Untraceable
Autor Sergei Lebedev Traducere de Antonina W Bouisen Limba Engleză Hardback – 17 feb 2021
"A thriller dipped in poison ... shares some of le Carr 's fascination with secret worlds and the nature of evil."
--The New York Times
The terrifying, lengthening list of Russia's use of lethal poisons against its critics has inspired acclaimed author Sergei Lebedev's latest novel. With uncanny timing, he examines how and why Russia and the Soviet Union have developed horrendous neurotoxins. At its center is a ruthless chemist named Professor Kalitin, obsessed with developing an absolutely deadly, undetectable and untraceable poison for which there is no antidote. But Kalitin becomes consumed by guilt over countless deaths from his Faustian pact to create the ultimate venom. When the Soviet Union collapses, the chemist defects and is given a new identity in Western Europe. After another Russian is murdered with Kalitin's poison, his cover is blown and he's drawn into an investigation of the death by Western agents. Two special forces killers are sent to silence him--using his own undetectable poison. In this fast-paced, genre-bending tale, Lebedev weaves suspenseful pages of stunningly beautiful prose exploring the historical trajectories of evil. From Nazi labs, Stalinist plots and the Chechen Wars, to present-day Russia, Lebedev probes the ethical responsibilities of scientists supplying modern tyrants and autocrats with ever newer instruments of retribution, destruction and control.
Toate formatele și edițiile | Preț | Express |
---|---|---|
Paperback (1) | 43.24 lei 3-5 săpt. | +21.43 lei 7-13 zile |
Bloomsbury Publishing – sep 2021 | 43.24 lei 3-5 săpt. | +21.43 lei 7-13 zile |
Hardback (2) | 124.81 lei 3-5 săpt. | |
New Vessel Press – 17 feb 2021 | 124.81 lei 3-5 săpt. | |
Bloomsbury Publishing – 3 mar 2021 | 138.10 lei 3-5 săpt. | +14.24 lei 7-13 zile |
Preț: 124.81 lei
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Enthralling and exquisite, by one of modern Russia's finest writers
One of Russia's most interesting young novelists takes on Putin, poison and power in this unique novel; Lebedev provides a fascinating window on modern Russia
A spellbinding insight into a secret world that we forget at our peril, a world of assassins, spies, patriots and poison masters whose shockingly evil decisions are made in their unwavering belief of serving a greater good. A thrilling, haunting, essential read
Astonishing... Ingeniously structured around the progressive uncovering of memories of a difficult personal and national past [...] with a visceral, at times almost unbearable, force'
A Dantean descent... As cold and stark as a glacial crevasse, but as beautiful as one, too, with a clear poetic sensibility built to stand against the forces of erasure'
Sergei Lebedev is a marvelous writer with two rare gifts: a nobility of style and the most precise inner vision, which allows him to see and plumb the entire depth of the anthropological catastrophe that occurred in twentieth-century Russia. Lebedev has perceived what was invisible to most Soviet and post-Soviet writers
I almost felt as though I should be swearing an official secrets act in order to read Untraceable. [Lebedev's] words echoed through me... The translation by Antonina W. Bouis is fabulous... A beautiful, disturbing and penetrating read'
I was captured by the velvet lyricism of his prose and his le Carré-ish plot
Beautifully written, this political spy thriller from Russia is an exciting, penetrating, absolute whammy of a read
Lebedev has written a novel with firm nods to Skripal and Novichok, but also widens out to poisons both moral and political
An intense and intelligent novel that maps the political life of modern Russia through its history and relationship with the wider world... This is a novel of ethics and pragmatism, of obsession and revenge, of entrenched divisions and how power resides in the wrong hands'
[A] superb literary thriller
Lebedev writes superbly and his denouement deftly blends comedy and poignancy
Lebedev's story transcends its factual source material. On the surface, Untraceable is a taut spy thriller with Gothic flourishes... Woven into the cloak-and-dagger chase is a complex tale of memory. Failed relationships, missions and regimes haunt the novel's characters as they do John le Carré's... Explores the Soviet legacy, the toll of more recent depredations in the north Caucasus (where one of the agents has witnessed and committed atrocities), and contemporary Russia's unwillingness to reckon with its past'
[Lebedev] takes the spy novel and transforms it into something akin to a political, even spiritual, allegory... The details surrounding these cases are so lurid that at times they feel fictional, and with Untraceable, Sergei Lebedev has won the race to write the first serious (and immensely readable) spy novel about such poisoners'
Untraceable, beautifully translated by Antonina W. Bouis, is spy fiction of the highest calibre
The topicality of this fierce novel risks overshadowing its literary and literary historical qualities. To my mind it invites comparisons with two beacons of extremism from the earlier twentieth century: Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon and the terrifyingly aestheticized war diaries of Ernst Jünger
Offers a pitiless insight into a murky, secret world where everyone is bad and morally corrupted by misusing their 'creativity in the name of evil'
Spellbinding
Superb literary thriller
Sergei Lebedev writes beautifully about the horrors involved, the emotions of the individuals and the landscapes in which they operate. The translation is smooth and unobtrusive. This is a most impressive account of human and state depravity and one man's indefatigable attempts to do good at whatever cost to himself
Sergei Lebedev's Untraceable set within a world of poisoned dissidents, conflicted morality and Kremlin power politics is a sinister thriller that lingers