The Gift is the phantasmal autobiography of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdynstev, a writer
living in the closed world of Russian intellectuals in Berlin shortly after the
First World War.
This gorgeous tapesty of literature and butterflies tells the story of Fyodor's
pursuits as a writer. Its heroine is not Fyodor's elusive and beloved Zina,
however, but Russian prose and poetry itself. Translated by Michael Scammell.