Gaito Gazdanov [about 1950?]

Source:
Society of friends of Gaito Gazdanov: The Photo Album:
Click here to view source.

Gaito Gazdanov's Paris / 3

Introduction

Gaito Gazdanov was an exiled Russian novelist, short story writer and literary critic who made his living as a Paris taxi driver for nearly 25 years, from 1928 to 1952. His novel Night Roads (Nochnye Dorogi in the original Russian) is based on his taxi driving experiences.

Night Roads has not yet (2008) been published in English and the stories on this web site are derived from Elena Balzanno’s French translation (Chemins Nocturnes: Viviane Hamy, 1991). Needless to say, this web site is not an English version of Night Roads. It’s just a collection of snippets from the novel, focusing on the experiences of a Paris taxi driver in the 1930s.

The evocative subtleties that a reader of Russian would find in the original novel will have taken a beating in the double translation, especially since my rendering from French to English is an amateur job hampered by a less than perfect knowledge of French. Luckily, Gazdanov’s taxi driving anecdotes are pretty indestructible and they will likely strike a chord with Taxi Library readers.

Numbers in square brackets at the end of each passage are page references from the Viviane Hamy edition of Chemins Nocturnes.

Norman Beattie
March, 2008