Novel with Cocaine
An emigrant’s novel from 1934, the book’s author is identified more than sixty years later. Until that moment it was believed that the book was written by Nabokov and M. Ageyev was one of his pseudonyms. It was recently proven that the real author’s identity belongs to the Russian novelist Mark Levi.
This is a cold-eyed and unsettling novel, told with sardonic humor and voluptuous imagery. As we follow Vadim’s downward spiral into addiction, we’re confronted with the classic opposition between grim social reality and the insatiable human desire for bodily pleasure. Surprisingly, the novel’s concerns are not overtly political. The Revolution is nothing but a distant thunder to Vadim’s glazed perceptions. He is disdainful both of bourgeois privilege and smug Communist ideology. But the harshest judgments are reserved for his own self-loathing and the contradiction he perceives within his psyche: "sensuality and spirituality were for some reason completely separate in me."
Marc Levy
Marc Levy was born in France on October 16th, 1961.When he turned eighteen, he joined the Red Cross, where he spent the next six years. In parallel, he studied management and computer programming at Paris-Dauphine University. In 1983, he created a computer graphics company based in France and the United States.
Six years later, he lost majority control of the group and resigned. Starting again from scratch, he returned to Paris and co-founded an interior design and planning company with two friends; the company soon became one of the leading office architecture firms in France.
At thirty-seven, Marc Levy wrote a story for the man that his son would grow up to be. In early 1999, his sister, a screenwriter (now a film director), encouraged him to send the manuscript to Editions Robert Laffont, who immediately decided to publish "If Only It Were True". Before it was published, Steven Spielberg acquired film rights to the novel. The movie, "Just like Heaven", produced by Steven Spielberg, starring Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, was a #1 box office hit in America in 2005.
After "If Only It Were True", Marc Levy began writing full-time. All of his novels have hit the top of the best-seller list in France. They are also very successful internationally and are consistently on the bestseller list in several countries including Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, and Taiwan.
Още книги от автора
It Happened at Night
