M. Ageyev
M. Ageyev is believed to be the nom-de-plume of Mark Lazarevich Levi. His best-known work, Novel With Cocaine was published in 1934 in the Parisian émigré publication, Numbers. Nikita Struve has alleged it to be the work of another Russian author employing a pen name, Vladimir Nabokov; this idea was debunked by Nabokov's son Dmitry in his preface to The Enchanter.
Levi's life is shrouded in mystery and conjecture. He returned to the U.S.S.R. in 1942 and spent the rest of his life in Yerevan, where he died on August 5, 1973.
“Boulevards are like people: similar in their youth, they undergo gradual change according to what ferments in them.”
M. Ageyev
“Finally, when all was said and done, the certainty (so often experienced, yet always new) that female charms, the kind that inflame the senses, are no more than kitchen smells: they tease you when you're hungry and disgust you when you've had your fill.”
M. Ageyev
“And if all womankind banded together and took the male path, the world would turn into one huge brothel.”
M. Ageyev
“To begin with, I had never done any good deeds; besides, even if I had simply fabricated a few, I would not have enjoyed going on about them.”
M. Ageyev
“I was terrified as only grown men and women can be when they wake up in the middle of the night and begin to realise, in the absolute silence and solitude all around them, that it is not only their dream that has woken them, that it is their whole way of life.”
M. Ageyev