The novel opens with a first-person account of a shocking incident in the Russian civil war, when the then-fifteen-year-old narrator is forced to defend himself by killing a pursuer (although he himself calls it “murder” throughout). Years later, he is working as a journalist in Paris and he comes to find out that his victim, Alexander “Sasha” Wolf is very much alive and also a writer. (None of these are spoilers.) From that point on, the book becomes very much a meditation on fate, life, and death. Although he befriends Wolf, he also considers him a specter haunting him, one who forces him to confront his war experiences and whether he has lived his post-murder life in a way that makes his choice to defend himself with deadly force an honorable one. The narrator’s appearance also makes Sasha grapple with his survival. “I waited my whole life for something unexpected to happen, something entirely unforeseen, some incredible shock, when I’d see anew what I’d once loved so much: the warm, sensual world that I lost,” he writes. “I don’t know why it slipped away from me. But it happened at that very moment” (134). The book is flawed by the description of a love affair that the unnamed narrator embarks upon, one that factors into the surprising climax, but felt like a distraction. An intriguing premise that could have been so much more.