'I have killed and yet I consider myself to be a good man.' So begins the tale of former Russian spy Golubchik and his quest to claim the noble name of his father, his affair with a model and his hatred for his half-brother.

This is a welcome reissue of a novel by one of the great Central European writers of the 20th century. A prolific political journalist and novelist, Joseph Roth admired the old Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg Empire as a cosmopolitan world and noted its decline as a sad chapter in European history. In Confessions of a Murderer, first published in 1936, a former Russian secret agent holds court in a tiny Russian restaurant in Paris as he tells of his quest to claim the noble name of his father, his destructive love affair and his hatred for his half-brother, the rightful prince. The colourful story - which has backdrops of pre-World War One Paris, rural Russia and St Petersburg before the Revolution - is told in a graceful, fluent narrative of genuine depth and richness.

'I have killed and yet I consider myself to be a good man.' So begins the tale of former Russian spy Golubchik and his quest to claim the noble name of his father, his affair with a model and his hatred for his half-brother.