A family of Russian emigres seeks refuge in Paris in this hypnotically dark classic of love deceit and wayward youth by a pioneering Russian writer Left to her own devices in Biarritz fourteenyearold Russian Liza meets an older English boy Cromwell on a beach He thinks he has found a magical romantic beauty and insists upon calling her Isolde she is taken with his Buick and ability to pay for dinner and champagne Disaffected and restless Liza her brother Nikolai and her boyfriend Andrei enjoy Cromwells company in restaurants and jazz bars after he follows Liza back to Parisuntil his mother stops giving him money When the siblings own mother abandons them to follow a lover to Nice the group falls deeper into its haze of alcohol and their darker drives begin to take over First published in 1929 Isolde is a startlingly fresh disturbing portrait of a lost generation of Russian exiles by Irina Odoevtseva a major Russian writer who has never before appeared in English