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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.
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My Armenian Friend (Hardcover)
Andreï Makine; Translated by Geoffrey Strachan
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R342
R279
Discovery Miles 2 790
Save R63 (18%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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My Armenian Friend is a moving and nostalgic story about how one
friendship can shift our perspective and irrevocably change our
lives. Set in Siberia in the 1970s during the decline of the Soviet
Empire, the adult narrator looks back on a childhood friendship
formed with an Armenian boy called Vardan. The narrator becomes
Vardan's protector, for the young Armenian's maturity and
sensitivity make him a target for schoolyard bullies. The narrator
is welcomed by Vardan's family living in exile in a diverse
neighbourhood populated by former prisoners, exhausted adventurers
and many who have been forcibly uprooted from their homes. Touching
anecdotes characterise this text, and powerful memories blending
reality and myth are used to recreate a 'kingdom of Armenia' that
will have a lasting impact upon the author.
He was interned at Buchenwald during the German occupation and
imprisoned by the Vietnamese when France's armies in the Far East
collapsed. Now Capitaine Degorce is an interrogator himself, and
the only peace he can find is in the presence of Tahar, a captive
commander in the very organization he is charged with eliminating.
But his confessor is no saint: Tahar stands accused of
indiscriminate murder. Lieutenant Andreani - who served with
Degorce in Vietnam and revels in his new role as executioner - is
determined to see a noose around his neck. This is Algeria, 1957.
Blood, sand, dust, heat - perhaps the bitterest colonial conflict
of the last century. Degorce will learn that in times of war, no
matter what a man has suffered in his past, there is no limit to
the cruelty he is capable of.
In the immense virgin pine forests of Siberia, where the snows of
winter are vast and endless, sits the little village of Svetlaya.
Once, the village had been larger, more prosperous, but time and
the pendulum of history had reduced it by the 1970s to no more than
a cluster of izbas.
But for three young men--the handsome young Alyosha, the crippled
Utkin, and the older, dashing Samurai--little is needed to
construct their own special universe. Despite the harshness of the
environment and their meager resources, the three adolescents form
a tight band of friendship and dream of another life, a world of
passion and love. And when they learn one day that a Western film
is being shown in the closest real city, they trek for hours on
snowshoes to see it. Through that film, the boys' lives are changed
forever.
Written from the perspective of twenty years after these youthful
events, "Once Upon the River Love" follows the destinies of these
three young idealists up to the present day, to the boardwalks of
Brighton Beach and the jungles of Central America.
With the same mastery of plot and prose that marked the author's"
Dreams of My Russian Summers," this novel demonstrates Makine's
remarkable ability to recreate the past with such precision and
beauty that the present becomes all the more poignant.
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.
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The Last Brother (Paperback)
Nathacha Appanah; Translated by Geoffrey Strachan
1
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R306
R248
Discovery Miles 2 480
Save R58 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Raj is oblivious to the Second World War being fought beyond his
tiny exotic island. His mother is his sole company while his father
works as a prison guard, so the boy thinks only of making friends.
One day, from the far-away world, a ship brings to the island
Jewish exiles who have been refused entry to Israel. David, a
recently orphaned boy of his own age from Prague, becomes the
friend that he has longed for, and Raj takes it upon himself to
help David to escape from the prison. As they flee through
sub-tropical forests and devastating storms, the boys battle hunger
and malaria - and forge a friendship only death could destroy.
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.
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.
'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.
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Tropic of Violence (Paperback)
Nathacha Appanah; Translated by Geoffrey Strachan
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R289
R238
Discovery Miles 2 380
Save R51 (18%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Marie, a nurse on the island of Mayotte, adopts an abandoned baby
and names him Moise, raising him as a French boy. As he grows up,
Moise struggles with his status as an "outsider" and to understand
why he was abandoned as a baby. When Marie dies, he is left alone,
plunged into uncertainty and turmoil, ending up in the largest and
most infamous slum on Mayotte, nicknamed "Gaza". Narrated by five
different characters, Tropic of Violence is an exploration of lost
youth on the French island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean. Shining
a powerful light on problems of violence, immigration, identity,
deprivation and isolation on this island that became a French
departement in 2011, it is a remarkable, unsettling new novel that
draws on the author's own observations from her time on Mayotte.
Translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan
"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
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Human Love (Paperback)
Geoffrey Strachan; Andre i Makine
1
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R336
R272
Discovery Miles 2 720
Save R64 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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As a child, Elias Almeida loses both his parents during the Angolan
uprising against colonial rule. As an adult and professional
revolutionary, he bears witness to mankind at its pitiless worst.
Yet he continues to believe in a better world and in the redeeming
power of love -- even though he cannot be with the woman he loves,
who rescued him from thugs one snowy night on the streets of
Moscow. Spanning forty years of Africa's past as a battleground
between East and West, this powerful novel explores the heights and
depths of human nature as it tells a profoundly affecting story of
sacrifice and idealism.
Once upon a time there was a boy whose mother called him "Wolf" She
thought this name would bring him strength, luck, natural
authority, but how could she know that this boy would grow up to be
the gentlest and strangest of sons and that he would end up
captured like a wild animal There he is now, in the back of a
police van, as we turn the page It all begins with a crash. One
night, seventeen-year-old Wolf steals his mother's car and drives
six hundred kilometres in search of his sister, who left home ten
years ago. Unlicensed and on edge, he veers onto the wrong side of
the road and causes an accident. He is arrested, imprisoned, and
leaves his mother and sister to pick up the pieces. What follows is
an unflinching account of the events that lead to this moment, told
through the alternating perspectives of Wolf's mother, sister and
various other voices. In this raw and poignant novel, Nathacha
Appanah reveals how trauma shapes generations and the wounds it
leaves behind. The Sky Above the Roof is both a portrait of a
fractured family and a poetic exploration of the ways we break
apart and rebuild Translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan
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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Nadine Gordimer
Paperback
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R398
R330
Discovery Miles 3 300
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