Dimensions
140 x 223 x 17mm
An astounding novel that penetrates the 20th-century experience, from one of Europe's most feted authors. Makine's
last novel, 'A Life's Music', won France's Grand Prix RTL-Lire.
In present day France a Russian writer recalls his harsh childhood at a Stalingrad orphanage in the 1960s and the old French woman, 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. 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.
