Imprint
- Sceptre
- Sceptre
Fiction, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Historical fiction, Fiction in translation
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.
Praise for The Life of an Unknown Man
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Beautifully crafted and unashamedly romantic, building from an intimate love story something far more ambitious and universal - worthy of a place with the Russian greats. - Sunday Tasmanian
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'It reiterates the author's passionate attachment to Russia, and his determination to celebrate individual humanity while excoriating the oppressive politics that have shaped our present reality. - The Canberra Times
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Andrei Makine is a Russian living in Paris and writing in French, but his great 19thcentury forebears are everywhere in this book. - The Age
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Makine's laconic, sardonic portrait of the new Russia is laced with fury...a bold and eloquent novel - Helen Dunmore, Guardian
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Makine is a consummate literary artist, but he is teacher as well as storyteller and, best of all, enchanter - Allan Massie, Scotsman
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Seamlessly translated by Geoffrey Strachan, Makine s novel explores the attempt of two ordinary people to transcend suffering and find life s essential meaning. It is difficult to write without sentimentality about such a subject, but Makine s intelligence and truthfulness dismiss banality. - Pamela Norris, Literary Review
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A powerful, thoughtful book about the reliability of memory and how time mutates the meaning of both literature and history. - Tina Jackson, Metro
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His novels possess an eerie beauty invariably capable of surpassing the polemic...If he has an artistic kindred spirit it is most probably the South African Nobel laureate JM Coetzee - Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
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