Happiness and Other Stories

Gaito Gazdanov was born in Saint Petersburg. Then, due to his father’s service, the family often moved: they lived in Siberia, Poltava, and Kharkiv. In Poltava, Gazdanov studied in a cadet corps; later, he continued his education at the Kharkiv Gymnasium.

In 1919, not yet 16 years old, Gazdanov joined P. N. Wrangel’s Volunteer movement—later explaining that it was to “understand what war is like.” For about a year, he served as a private on an armored train. Retreating together with the White Army, he ended up in Crimea, and then, on a steamer, left for Turkey. In Constantinople, he wrote his first story, “The Hotel of the Coming Days.”

In 1923 he moved to Paris, where he spent most of his life. He worked as a dock laborer, washed steam engines, was a mechanic at the Citroën auto plant, and taught French and Russian. For four years, he studied at the Sorbonne in the Faculty of History and Philology, focusing on the history of literature, sociology, and economics.

For many years, even after becoming known as a writer, he was forced to make a living by working as a taxi driver. Only after the war did the success of the novel “The Return of Buddha” provide him with financial independence. Critics called Gazdanov and Vladimir Nabokov the most gifted authors of the younger generation.