Untraceable
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When the helicopter rose over the forest and metallic voices addressed him, he had time to look back—an armored German police van was blocking the road.
He turned the car across the ditch up onto the hill. A light feeling of success carried him over stones and hummocks. The car struck the embankment and the motor stopped.
He ran toward the trees. The helicopter clattered overhead, the metal voices ordered him to stop. A round of bullets punctured the grass, but he managed to get into the woods. Dogs barked, he heard orders, shots. The forest spun him around, put roots and holes under his feet, lashed him with branches.
There was a sandy niche, a lair, under an overhang, and he crawled in, crazed by the running.
A gas grenade fell from above, hissing, scattering white, acid smoke. He could still activate the container, let Neophyte out; he tried to find it, at least touch it, feel that he had a weapon.
His pocket was empty. The bottle had fallen out along the way.
Weeping from the tear gas, he crawled out, covered in leaves like a forest demon.
A semicircle of soldiers in black gas masks aimed their weapons at him.
Shershnev slowly raised his hands.
More and more SWAT team soldiers ran out of the woods.
The barrels looked him in the face. The only visible face among dozens of black masks.
That evening it would be in all the papers. On television. On the Internet.
On the smartphone of the boy from the container.
On Maxim’s smartphone.
Shershnev felt tears running down his cheeks, not tears of relief, but tears caused by the acrid gas.
SERGEI LEBEDEV has been called the most important younger Russian author writing today. His novels have been translated into many languages and three of his works—Oblivion, The Year of the Comet and The Goose Fritz—have been published in English to great acclaim by New Vessel Press.
ANTONINA W. BOUIS has translated over 80 works by Russian authors such as Evgeny Yevtushenko, Mikhail Bulgakov and Andrei Sakharov. Bouis, previously executive director of the Soros Foundation in the former USSR, now lives in New York City.
OBLIVION
BY SERGEI LEBEDEV
In one of the first 21st century Russian novels to probe the legacy of the Soviet prison camp system, a young man travels to the vast wastelands of the Far North to uncover the truth about a shadowy neighbor who saved his life, and whom he knows only as Grandfather II. Emerging from today’s Russia, where the ills of the past are being forcefully erased from public memory, this masterful novel represents an epic literary attempt to rescue history from the brink of oblivion.
https://newvesselpress.com/books/oblivion/
THE YEAR OF THE COMET
BY SERGEI LEBEDEV
A story of a Russian boyhood and coming of age as the Soviet Union is on the brink of collapse. Lebedev depicts a vast empire coming apart at the seams, transforming a very public moment into something tender and personal, and writes with stunning beauty and shattering insight about childhood and the growing consciousness of a boy in the world.
https://newvesselpress.com/books/year-of-the-comet/
GOOSE FRITZ
BY SERGEI LEBEDEV
This revelatory novel tells the story of a young Russian, the sole survivor of a once numerous clan of German origin, who delves relentlessly into the unresolved past. The Goose Fritz illuminates both personal and political history in a passion-filled family saga about an often confounding country that has long fascinated the world.
https://newvesselpress.com/books/the-goose-fritz/
WHAT’S LEFT OF THE NIGHT
BY ERSI SOTIROPOULOS
Constantine Cavafy arrives in Paris in 1897 on a trip that will deeply shape his future and push him toward his poetic inclination. With this lyrical novel, tinged with an hallucinatory eroticism that unfolds over three unforgettable days, celebrated Greek author Ersi Sotiropoulos depicts Cavafy in the midst of a journey of self-discovery across a continent on the brink of massive change. A stunning portrait of a budding author—before he became C.P. Cavafy, one of the 20th century’s greatest poets—that illuminates the complex relationship of art, life, and the erotic desires that trigger creativity.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/whats-left-night/
THE 6:41 TO PARIS
BY JEAN-PHILIPPE BLONDEL
Cécile, a stylish 47-year-old, has spent the weekend visiting her parents outside Paris. By Monday morning, she’s exhausted. These trips back home are stressful and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it’s soon occupied by a man she recognizes as Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation 30 years ago. In the fraught hour and a half that ensues, Cécile and Philippe hurtle towards the French capital in a psychological thriller about the pain and promise of past romance.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-641-to-paris/
THE BISHOP’S BEDROOM
BY PIERO CHIARA
World War Two has just come to an end and there’s a yearning for renewal. A man in his thirties is sailing on Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, hoping to put off the inevitable return to work. Dropping anchor in a small, fashionable port, he meets the enigmatic owner of a nearby villa. The two form an uneasy bond, recognizing in each other a shared taste for idling and erotic adventure. A sultry, stylish psychological thriller executed with supreme literary finesse.
https://newvesselpress.com/books/the-bishops-bedroom/
THE EYE
BY PHILIPPE COSTAMAGNA
It’s a rare and secret profession, comprising a few dozen people around the world equipped with a mysterious mixture of knowledge and innate sensibility. Summoned to Swiss bank vaults, Fifth Avenue apartments, and Tokyo storerooms, they are entrusted by collectors, dealers, and museums to decide if a coveted picture is real or fake and to determine if it was painted by Leonardo da Vinci or Raphael. The Eye lifts the veil on the rarified world of connoisseurs devoted to the authentication and discovery of Old Master artworks.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-eye/
THE ANIMAL GAZER
BY EDGARDO FRANZOSINI
A hypnotic novel inspired by the strange and fascinating life of sculptor Rembrandt Bugatti, brother of the fabled automaker. Bugatti obsessively observes and sculpts the baboons, giraffes, and panthers in European zoos, finding empathy with their plight and identifying with their life in captivity. Rembrandt Bugatti’s work, now being rediscovered, is displayed in major art museums around the world and routinely fetches large sums at auction. Edgardo Franzosini recreates the young artist’s life with intense lyricism, passion, and sensitivity.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-animal-gazer/
ALLMEN AND THE DRAGONFLIES
BY MARTIN SUTER
Johann Friedrich von Allmen has exhausted his family fortune by living in Old World grandeur despite present-day financial constraints. Forced to downscale, Allmen inhabits the garden house of his former Zurich estate, attended by his Guatemalan butler, Carlos. This is the first of a series of humorous, fast-paced detective novels devoted to a memorable gentleman thief. A thrilling art heist escapade infused with European high culture and luxury that doesn’t shy away from the darker side of human nature.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/allmen-and-the-dragonflies/
THE MADELEINE PROJECT
BY CLARA BEAUDOUX
A young woman moves into a Paris apartment and discovers a storage room filled with the belongings of the previous owner, a certain Madeleine who died in her late nineties, and whose treasured possessions nobody seems to want. In an audacious act of journalism driven by personal curiosity and humane tenderness, Clara Beaudoux embarks on The Madeleine Project, documenting what she finds on Twitter with text and photographs, introducing the world to an unsung 20th century figure.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-madeleine-project/
ADUA
BY IGIABA SCEGO
http://newvesselpress.com/books/adua/
IF VENICE DIES
BY SALVATORE SETTIS
Internationally renowned art historian Salvatore Settis ignites a new debate about the Pearl of the Adriatic and cultural patrimony at large. In this fiery blend of history and cultural analysis, Settis argues that “hit-and-run” visitors are turning Venice and other landmark urban settings into shopping malls and theme parks. This is a passionate plea to secure the soul of Venice, written with consummate authority, wide-ranging erudition and élan.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/if-venice-dies/
THE MADONNA OF NOTRE DAME
BY ALEXIS RAGOUGNEAU
Fifty thousand people jam into Notre Dame Cathedral to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption. The next morning, a beautiful young woman clothed in white kneels at prayer in a cathedral side chapel. But when someone accidentally bumps against her, her body collapses. She has been murdered. This thrilling novel illuminates shadowy corners of the world’s most famous cathedral, shedding light on good and evil with suspense, compassion and wry humor.
https://newvesselpress.com/books/madonna-notre-dame/
THE LAST WEYNFELDT
BY MARTIN SUTER
Adrian Weynfeldt is an art expert in an international auction house, a bachelor in his mid-fifties living in a grand Zurich apartment filled with costly paintings and antiques. Always correct and well-mannered, he’s given up on love until one night—entirely out of character for him—Weynfeldt decides to take home a ravishing but unaccountable young woman and gets embroiled in an art forgery scheme that threatens his buttoned up existence. This refined page-turner moves behind elegant bourgeois facades into darker recesses of the heart.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-last-weynfeldt/
MOVING THE PALACE
BY CHARIF MAJDALANI
A young Lebanese adventurer explores the wilds of Africa, encountering an eccentric English colonel in Sudan and enlisting in his service. In this lush chronicle of far-flung adventure, the military recruit crosses paths with a compatriot who has dismantled a sumptuous palace and is transporting it across the continent on a camel caravan. This is a captivating modern-day Odyssey in the tradition of Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/moving-the-palace/
To purchase these titles and for more information please visit newvesselpress.com.