New to St Petersburg, young, naive Vanya Smurov finds a mentor in the enigmatic and intellectual Larion Stroop, who initiates him into a fascinating sphere of art and beauty. As Vanya
is drawn into Stroop’s world of aesthetic sensuality, he also becomes aware that Stroop is a frequenter of bathhouses: a homosexual. Disturbed by this revelation, Vanya abandons Stroop
and moves to the Volga countryside in search of a more traditional existence. Yet he soon finds that the alternatives offered there are equally unsettling, leading him to question his initial reaction to Stroop’s hedonistic lifestyle.
Published here in a new translation, Wings was the first Russian novel to focus on homosexuality. Greeted with outrage when it appeared in 1906, this unjustly neglected work is a groundbreaking and sensitive study of a young man’s struggle to come to terms with his identity.
About the author
Reviewer and critic Paul Bailey has been a leading literary figure since the 1960s. He has written and edited many works, and has been shortlisted twice for the Booker Prize.
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