Futility by William Alexander Gerhardie

Edith Wharton hailed Futility as a rare novel that makes Russian life vivid and intelligible to Western readers, and William Gerhardi's story lives up to that praise with wit, sympathy, and emotional force. From the narrator's return to Vladivostok, the harbor and city become a threshold of memory, departure, and uneasy belonging, leading him into the shabby rooms, seaside datchas, and crowded lodgings of the Bursanov family. There he is drawn into the lives of Nina, Sonia, Vera, their father Nikolai Vasilievich, and Fanny Ivanovna, the woman who has lived with him for years without legal marriage. What begins in teasing, music, dancing, and domestic comedy gradually reveals jealousy, sacrifice, and hidden sorrow. A performance of Chekhov's Three Sisters first seems to confirm the family's happiness, until the narrator begins to see the fractures beneath the surface. Nina's departure for Moscow, the station farewell, and the narrator's sudden proposal to her intensify the emotional uncertainty. Fanny's long confession deepens the novel's tragic heart: a story of ruined hopes, social shame, devotion, and the painful compromises demanded by love and family. Against the backdrop of war, refugees, shortages, English engineers, mines, and political upheaval, the novel moves through dances, dinners, concerts, and garden parties, capturing a society trying to amuse itself while history closes in. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.