Untraceable

“Enthralling and exquisite, by one of modern Russia’s finest writers.”

—PHILIPPE SANDS, author of East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes against Humanity”

“The darkest impulses of science and power cross paths with human error and plots gone awry in Sergei Lebedev’s incisive and all-too-plausible Russian novel about nerve agents, assassination and secrets both political and personal.”

—WILL ENGLUND, Pulitzer Prize-winning former Moscow correspondent for The Washington Post and author of March 1917: On the Brink of War and Revolution

“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.”

—VLADIMIR SOROKIN, author of The Blizzard, Day of the Oprichnik and Ice Trilogy

“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.”

—ANNE APPLEBAUM, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gulag: A History and Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe

“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.”

—RORY MACLEAN, author of Pravda Ha Ha: Truth, Lies and the End of Europe

“Rich in textures, colors, sounds, and visual details… Lebedev is arguably the best of Russia’s younger generation of writers.”

—THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

“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.”

—THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

“Astonishing… ingeniously structured around the progressive uncovering of memories of a difficult personal and national past… with a visceral, at times almost unbearable, force.”

—THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT