Junkermann’s Swan Song returns to Vasily Karlovich Junkermann at the end of his life. The swaggering adventurer of the first volume—Cossack guard, refugee, social climber, and self-styled conqueror of interwar Athens—now confronts the reckoning of age, disillusionment, and decline.

Where Junkermann traced a frenetic rise shaped by appetite, ambition, and...