Little Apple (discounted) - Leo Perutz

Little Apple by Leo Perutz, translated by John Brownjohn / 224-page paperback published by Pushkin Vertigo / ISBN 9781782271673 / A discounted book with minor shelfwear

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A stylish thriller set during the Russian revolution that Ian Fleming called "a work of genius"

‘Now that he had sampled all the terrors of the age, life meant nothing to him any more. If Selyukov came now, he was ready for him’

Officer Georg Vittorin is consumed by murderous thoughts. Returning home to Vienna in 1918 after three years in a Russian Prisoner of War camp, all he can do is daydream of taking revenge on Captain Selyukov, the loathsome officer who offended his honour.

But as Vittorin plans his retribution, fate will have its own agenda, leading him on a wild and wintry goose chase across revolutionary Russia and halfway around Europe; via Constantinople’s underworld, a Bolshevik prison, and death’s door. Little Apple is a wryly told adventure story of one man’s obsession, and the wicked tricks our minds can play.

Men will die in Vittorin’s hands – but not as he intended…

Leo Perutz is the author of eleven novels that attracted the admiration of such writers as Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, Italo Calvino, and Jorge Luis Borges. He was born in Prague in 1882 and lived in Vienna until the NaziAnschluss, when he fled to Palestine. He returned to Austria in the fifties and died in 1957.