\\\"Another hour gone. But I\"m not afraid. There\"s only one thing I regret: that I\"ve lived for so many years without knowing where human happiness is to be found\\\" In these stories, four writers - all exiles from revolutionary Russia - explore four deaths in a world in which old certainties have dissolved forever....

A millionaire is killed. A golden statuette of a Buddha goes missing. A penniless student, who is afflicted by dream-like fits, is arrested and accused of murder. In typically crisp, unfussy prose, Gazdanov\"s delicately balanced novel is an......