Gaito Gazdanov’s An Evening with Claire is a masterpiece of Russian émigré literature. Written when its author was just twenty-six—with the memories of his harsh years in the Russian civil war still hauntingly vivid in his mind—An Evening with Claire is a psychological novel that is both grand and introspective. Gazdanov’s fist novel is at once an intimate and sensual account of a young man’s coming-of-age.