With Requiem for a Lost Empire Andreï Makine has created a panoramic novel of eight decades of Soviet/Russian history starting in 1917. It is a story of extraordinary emotional intensity. For anybody like me with interest in the Russian "condition humaine", this was a must read. While written as ...
On a flower-covered balcony, cooled by Siberia’s dusty summer breezes, a grandmother tells stories to her grandson, the narrator, and granddaughter. But she is not just any grandmother, nor are these just any times. The grandmother is a Frenchwoman and these are the 1960s in the Soviet Union. Ye...
I have read many of Makine’s novels and it is obvious from his beautiful descriptive passages especially describing the countryside, and his characters that he is following in the tradition of the great Russian authors steeped in what is known as “the Russian Soul”. This term has been used in lit...