Years after the death of their beloved son, there is a knock at the door of Nikolai and Vera’s apartment. Introducing himself simply as ‘Sergeant Bertrand’, the unknown visitor triggers a precipitous journey into the depths of the human soul. Hailed as an early masterpiece of post-Soviet literature, Russian Gothic is now available in English for the first time. Three decades after it was written, its complex portrait of grief, misogyny, violence – and love – is as fresh, shocking and relevant as ever.