Gerhardie William Gerhardie 
Futility: A Novel [EPUB ebook] 

First published in 1922, public domain in the US. William Gerhardie’s first comic novel tells the story of a young Englishman who returns to St Petersburg where he was raised and falls in love with the daughter of a highly eccentric and dysfunctional family — a relationship which is played out with the armies of the Russian Revolution marching outside the parlour window.