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Every summer, young Andrei visits his grandmother, Charlotte
Lemmonier, whom he loves dearly. In a dusty village overlooking the
vast Russian steppes, she captivates her grandson and the other
children of the village with wondrous tales--watching Proust play
tennis in Neuilly, Tsar Nicholas II's visit to Paris, French
president Felix Faure dying in the arms of his mistress. But from
his mysterious grandmother, Andrei also learns of a Russia he has
never known: a country of famine and misery, brutal injustice, and
the hopeless chaos of war.
Enthralled, he weaves her stories into his own secret universe of
memory and dream. She creates for him a vivid portrait of the
France of her childhood, a distant Atlantis far more elegant,
carefree, and stimulating than Russia in the 1970s and '80s. Her
warm, artful memories of her homeland and of books captivate
Andrei. Absorbed in this vision, he becomes an outsider in his own
country, and eventually a restless traveler around Europe. "Dreams
of My Russian Summers" is an epic full of passion and tenderness,
pain and heartbreak, mesmerizing in every way.
"A Siberian Heart of Darkness" Julian Barnes On the far eastern
borders of the Soviet Union, in the sunset of Stalin's reign,
soldiers are training for a war that could end all wars, for in the
atomic age man has sown the seeds of his own destruction. Among
them is Pavel Gartsev, a reservist. Orphaned, scarred by the last
great war and unlucky in love, he is an instant victim for the
apparatchiks and ambitious careerists who thrive within the Red
Army's ranks. Assigned to a search party composed of regulars and
reservists, charged with the recapture of an escaped prisoner from
a nearby gulag, Gartsev finds himself one of an unlikely quintet of
cynics, sadists and heroes, embarked on a challenging manhunt
through the Siberian taiga. But the fugitive, capable, cunning and
evidently at home in the depths of these vast forests, proves no
easy prey. As the pursuit goes on, and the pursuers are struck by a
shattering discovery, Gartsev confronts both the worst within
himself and the tantalising prospect of another, totally different
life. Translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan
In Soviet Russia the desire for freedom is also a desire for the
freedom to love. Lovers live as outlaws, traitors to the collective
spirit, and love is more intense when it feels like an act of
resistance. Now entering middle age, an orphan recalls the fleeting
moments that have never left him - a scorching day in a blossoming
orchard with a woman who loves another; a furtive, desperate affair
in a Black Sea resort; the bunch of snowdrops a crippled childhood
friend gave him to give to his lover. As the dreary Brezhnev era
gives way to Perestroika and the fall of Communism, the orphan
uncovers the truth behind the life of Dmitri Ress, whose tragic
fate embodies the unbreakable bond between love and freedom.
In a snowbound railway station deep in the Soviet Union, a stranded
passenger comes across an old man playing the piano in the dark,
silent tears rolling down his cheeks. Once on the train to Moscow
he begins to tell his story: a tale of loss, love and survival that
movingly illustrates the strength of human resilience. 'A novella
to be read in a lunch hour and remembered for ever' Jilly Cooper,
Books of the Year, Sunday Telegraph
'Achingly beautiful' Guardian 'By turns touching and profoundly
sad' Spectator When a young, rebellious writer from Leningrad
arrives in a remote Russian village to study local customs, one
woman stands out: Vera, who has been waiting thirty years for her
lover to return from the Second World War. As fascinated as he is
appalled by the fruitless fidelity of this still beautiful woman,
he sets out to win her affections. But the better he thinks he
understands her the more she surprises him, and the more he gains
uncomfortable insights into himself. Lyrically evoking the haunting
beauty of the Archangel region, Makine tells a timeless story of
the human heart and its capacity for enduring love, selfish passion
and cowardly betrayal.
'It is impossible to exaggerate the power of this short, unbearably
poignant novel.' Mail on Sunday 'A bold and elegant novel' Helen
Dunmore, Guardian 'A haunting story, beautifully told' Viv Groskop,
Observer An extraordinary story of love and endurance during the
Siege of Leningrad lies at the heart of a magnificent novel about
Russia past and present, and the human condition. One night in St
Petersburg, two men meet, both adrift in the brash new Russia:
Shutov, a writer visiting after years of exile in Paris, and
Volsky, an elderly survivor of the Siege of Leningrad and Stalin's
purges. His life story - one of extreme suffering, courage and an
extraordinary love - he considers unremarkable. To Shutov it is a
revelation, the tale of an unsung hero that puts everything into
perspective and suggests where true happiness lies.
Locked behind the Iron Curtain, a young boy grows up bewitched by
his French grandmother's memories of Paris before the Great War.
Yet despite what he also learns of her suffering in the Soviet
Union under Stalin and during the Second World War, as an
adolescent he finds himself proud to be a Russian. Torn between the
two cultures, he eventually makes a choice - which has a wholly
unexpected outcome. Capturing the powerful allure of illusion, this
unforgettable novel traces a sentimental and intellectual journey
that embraces the dramatic history of the twentieth century.
An astounding novel that penetrates the 20th-century experience,
from one of Europe's most feted authors. In present-day France a
Russian writer recalls his harsh childhood at a Stalingrad
orphanage in the 1960s and the old Frenchwoman, a family friend,
whose tales fed his dreams of a better world. One story in
particular has stayed with him: that of her brief, passionate
affair, during World War II, with the French fighter pilot Jacques
Dorme, who subsequently died in a plane crash in the Siberian
mountains. So the narrator decides to retrace Jacques Dorme's
steps, beginning a journey which leads him not only to revisit the
land of his birth but also to see his adopted homeland in an
unflattering new light. A profound and moving novel about the
dangers of ideology and of war, delivered with humour, sensuousness
and great lyricism.
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