Novel with Cocaine

The Cocain Romance, or Novel With Cocaine (Roman s kokainom), is a mysterious Russian novel first published in 1934 in a Parisian émigré publication, Numbers, and subtitled "Confessions of a Russian opium-eater". Its author was given as M. Ageyev. The English translation of the title fails to convey the double entendre of the Russian "Роман," meaning both "novel" and "romance." The Cocain Romance is said to be a Dostoevskyan psychological novel o... more

The Cocain Romance, or Novel With Cocaine (Roman s kokainom), is a mysterious Russian novel first published in 1934 in a Parisian émigré publication, Numbers, and subtitled "Confessions of a Russian opium-eater". Its author was given as M. Ageyev. The English translation of the title fails to convey the double entendre of the Russian "Роман," meaning both "novel" and "romance." The Cocain Romance is said to be a Dostoevskyan psychological novel of ideas, which explores the interaction between psychology, philosophy, and ideology in its frank portrayal of an adolescent's cocaine addiction. The story relates the formative experiences of narrator Vadim at school and with women before he turns to drug abuse and the philosophical reflections to which it gives rise. Although Ageyev makes little explicit reference to the Russian Revolution of 1917, the novel's obsession with addictive forms of thinking finds resonance in the historical background, in which "our inborn feelings of humanity... less