John Cournos, born Ivan Grigorievich Korshun (Иван Григорьевич Коршун[1][2]) (6 March 1881 – 27 August 1966), was an American writer and translator.
In June 1912, Cournos moved to London, where he freelanced as an interviewer and critic for both UK and US publications and began his literary career as a poet and, later, novelist.
[6] It closely follows the early events of the Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, and it was set in Britain to better enable the British audience to imagine what it was like.
London is portrayed as plagued by poverty, with black market cigarettes and broken lifts, and the narrator wanders round the Strand exclaiming at the filth of the streets, the idlers and the jealous envy towards his new boots.
She described their lovestory in her detective novel Strong Poison (1930): her alter-ego female novelist Harriet Vane had an affair with writer Phillip Boyes (Cournos).