A Novel of London - Paperback

by Milos Crnjanski (Author), Will Firth (Translator), David Norris (Introduction by)

Here at long last in English, almost five decades after the publication of the original, is the classic of European modernism that established Serbian writer Milos Crnjanski as one of the great eastern European voices of the 20th century. Published in Belgrade in 1971 as Roman o Londonu, the novel follows an aging Russian émigré, Nikolai Repnin, as he attempts to make a life in the British capital in the 1940s, painting a starkly revelatory portrait of the war-battered city through the eyes of a person living in a constant state of rejection and alienation.

The book is far more, however, than just a novel about London. As Repnin wanders the streets and the bureaucracy of the bombed-out city, reminiscing about his opulent past in Russia and subsequent odyssey through Europe's cities after the Revolution, he encounters a host of émigrés from around the world, whose stories also unfold. A pan-European portrait of class structures and the real effects of the war emerges, a vision whose depth and scope may be unmatched in 20th century literature.

"Crnjanski has the genius of archetypes of history and human behavior. In A Novel of London he has woven a subtle meditation on the evil of our century... [but] also an immense poem of love and sacrifice." --L'Age d'Homme

"...a powerful recreation of the migrant experience in the twentieth century." --David Norris, from the Introduction

"Crnjanski does not deride the citizens of London in his alternating theses and antitheses.... Rather, he does it more tastefully and gently, with a smile of amusement, intimately, and with his characteristic irony." --Mirnes Sokolovic