Futility

Gerhardie drew on his own upbringing among the English community in Russia to tell a wry, aching story of love and drift. His Anglo-Russian narrator keeps returning to the sprawling Bursanov household, and to Nina, one of three sisters he cannot quite win, while revolution gathers offstage and money, promises, and hangers-on pile up around the family. The mood owes much to Chekhov: comedy and sadness sit side by side, and nothing resolves the way anyone hopes. Admired by Katherine Mansfield and later by Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene, it catches a vanishing world with light, unsentimental precision. This free PDF and EPUB edition revives a neglected comic classic of the early twentieth century.