I read Petersburg by Andrei Bely.
Amid civil unrest in Petersburg, Nikolai Appollonovich Ableukhov is conscripted into a revolutionary group. This group sends him a red domino which he wears to a masquerade and on soul searching treks around the city. His costumed capers are embellished by the local press and frequent, fabricated sightings transform The Red Domino into a symbol for the revolutionaries. The group sends another package to Nikolai: he examines its contents - a sardine tin - and lays it aside. Later, a letter arrives which instructs Nikolai to assassinate his high-ranking government official father, Appollon Appollonovich, with a bomb revealed to be inside the sardine tin. After a brief period of indecisiveness (and after unsubtle encouragement from his contact within the terrorist organization) Nikolai activates the timer mechanism and the bomb begins its (less than 24 hours!) countdown.
Appollon Appollonivich learns that his rebellious and lazy son is the infamous Red Domino and discovers the sardine tin during a search of Nikolai's room. Unaware of its contents, he carries it to his study. Nikolai notices the sardine tin has disappeared and assumes that agents for the terrorist group have retrieved it. The bomb explodes in his father's study but harms no one. Nikolai faints into a delirium during the chaotic aftermath and when he awakens learns that his father has retired. This resolution, though an anticlimactic end to the progenitor of the thriller, achieves the terrorist's objective. Changed forever, Nikolai travels to Egypt, studies the pyramids and writes a novel.
Bely excised large amounts of text from his symbolist novel after its initial publication in 1913. I read Robert Maguire's and John Malmstad's translation of the 1922 revised text. Bely's translators include more than fifty pages of footnotes and a map of Petersburg to clarify cultural and geographic references.
