UNCLE ANGHEL

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Good. The first edition in English, translated from the French by Maude Valerie White. The three stories in this volume continue the "Tales of Adrien Zograffi", which began in Kyra Kyralina (1924). Nicknamed the Maxim Gorky of the Balkans, Istrati (1884-1935) was a working class writer who is thought to be the first Romanian author to explicitly depict a homosexual character in his work. Octavo: [vi], 271, [3] pp. Original blue cloth binding, with a printed paper spine label. A bit of shallow chipping to the top corner of the prefatory and concluding leaves. The dust jacket is toned (truncated) along the spine and extremities, with some tape reinforcement on both the recto and verso. (Inventory #: 78502)