译自E.L.Voynich出版于1904年的小说Olive Latham。

此前该书曾有两个不同名的中译本，分别是《奥莉夫·拉森》（顾治洲、陈云路译，收在天津人民出版社1983年版的《伏尼契小说集》第二卷中）和《要塞钟声》（陆九如、陆肇明译，中国文联出版公司1986年版）。

Ethel Lilian Voynich, née Boole (May 11, 1864–July 27, 1960) was a novelist and musician, and a supporter of several revolutionary causes. Her father was the famous mathematician George Boole. Her mother was feminist philosopher Mary Everest,niece of George Everest and an author for the early-20th-century periodical Crank. In 1893(?) she married Wilfrid Michael Voynich, revolutionary, antiquarian and bibliophile, the eponym of the Voynich manuscript.

She is most famous for her novel The Gadfly, first published in 1897 in the United States (June) and Britain (September), about the struggles of an international revolutionary in Italy. This novel was very popular in the Soviet Union and was the top best seller and compulsory reading there, and was seen as ideologically useful; for similar reasons, the novel has been popular in the People's Republic of China as well.