bookshelves: published-1988,
france,
mystery-thriller,
under-500-ratings,
paper-read,
one-penny-wonder,
hardback,
winter-20152016,
lit-richer,
translation,
soviet,
newtome-author,
spring-2016,
adventurous-april-2016,
tbr-busting-2016
Recommended to Bettie☯ by: Helen
Read from October 29, 2014 to April 14, 2016
<- my cover
Description:
A Russian princess, a refugee from the Bolsheviks, abandoned by a faithless husband, flees with her child to France, where she is subsequently found half-naked on a riverbank next to a body of a man with a terrible wound on his head.Translated by Geoffrey Strachan who notes that Makine was born and brought up in Russia but this novel is written in French.
Dedication:
for You
Opening quotes by Dostoyevsky and Proust.
Opening:
Those that come first lie in wait for his words like mere eavesdroppers. Those that follow seem to appreciate something more in them. And they can be easily identified: there are fewer of them than the merely inquisitive ones and they come alone. They dare to draw a little closer to the tall old man as he slowly patrols the labyrinth of avenues, and they leave later than the first comers.This is a tale of Russian emigres in France. Dreamy prose delivered circumlocutionally, and in ever decreasing spirals backwards through time. One for lit lovers.