First published in Europe in the 1930s and '40s, these searing, evocative stories by the late émigré writer Nina Berberova (1901-1993) are portraits of the lives of Russian exiles in Paris on the eve of World War II. The protagonists range from housekeepers and waiters to shabby-genteel aristocrats and intellectuals—but all are united in a haunting displacement from their pasts, and all share a troubling uncertainty about the future.

Contents:

• The Resurrection of Mozart
• The Waiter and the Slut
• Astashev in Paris
• The Tattered Cloak
• The Black Pestilence
• In Memory of Schliemann