Yuri Felsen: Happiness

Prototype Publishing Ltd, 2026, softcover, 260 pages, 19 x 13 cm

Happiness (1932) is the second novel in Yuri Felsen’s ‘The Recurrence of Things Past’ project. Written again in diary form, but this time as a single, stream-of-consciousness address to the narrator Volodya’s beloved, Lyolya, it once again delves into the highs and (so many) lows of their difficult relationship. Picking up at a period in which their on–off relationship has been going well, the intrusion of new men and women into their lives quickly makes old certainties start to crumble, and brings Volodya to delve once again into the nature of love, happiness and the creative process which seems to be fed by so much pain and misery. No longer with only Bobby for a rival, Volodya must vie in Lyola’s affections with the Soviet film star Sergei N., the former soldier Shura, and the wealthy businessman Marc Osipovich – with tragic results. A snapshot of emigre life in interwar Paris, this novel also presents an unnerving portrait of the inner zeitgeist - and one that, amid the complexities of psychological introspection and the changing sexual politics, feels remarkably familiar and modern.