Direct Flight to Allah [Les Têtes de Stéphanie]

Elated by this dance of impostures, and despite having admitted authorship in July for the French edition, Gary published the book in London in May 1975, eight months after its French publication. He titled it Direct Flight to Allah and attributed it not to Shatan Bogat but to a certain René Deville: a text Gary had (re)translated from the French version, which he himself had translated from his own English text… Why keep things simple when the labyrinth of identities is already so far advanced? And the game continues, since Deville (a homophone of the English “devil”) comes to translate the original pseudonym, Shatan Bogat (which means “Satan the rich” in Russian).

It should be noted that the author is given as “René Deville” on the dust jacket and title page, but the spine reads “René Delaville.” This misprint, corrected in later printings, adds yet another layer of confusion. With Gary, one more hardly matters.