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With Love and Memory: A Profile of Andrei Makine
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21026 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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1 / 2000 |
2,950 Words |
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Shusha Guppy
Shusha Guppy is the author, most recently, of Three Journeys
in the Levant (Starhaven, 2001). Born and raised in Iran, she
studied in Paris and now lives in London. Guppy is the London
editor of the Paris Review and contributes to publications on
both sides of the Atlantic. |
In 1995 a novel written in French by an unknown Russian swept up literary Paris in a gust of enthusiasm. Hailed by the critics and the public alike, Andrei Makine's Le Testament Franais went on to win three prestigious prizes: the coveted Goncourt, the Medicis, and the Goncourt des Lycéens--an unprecedented triple honor. Since then it has been translated into thirty languages and sold a million copies in France alone.
Le Testament Franais tells the story of a young Russian growing up in a village on the edge of the steppe in Siberia. At its heart is Charlotte Lemonnier, the narrator's grandmother. Born in 1903, she is living in Russia with her parents, her idealistic father working as a doctor among the poor. When the Revolution breaks out she is unable to escape; she ends up marrying a Russian and spending the rest of her life there.
Through Charlotte the life of ordinary Russians during the communist era--"a myriad little gulags"--is vividly described. All that remains of her past is a small suitcase containing a few photographs and mementos. They enable her to reminisce about Paris during the Belle ƒpoque--the ease and elegance of life, the gardens and cafés, the Pre-Lachaise Cemetery, where so many famous artists and writers are buried--until a whole city is conjured out of the steppe, "like a misty Atlantis emerging from the sea."
"La vrai vie est ailleurs" (the real life is elsewhere), wrote Rimbaud, and the young narrator (clearly Makine himself) dreams of one day living in France. He lands in Paris in 1987--alone, penniless--at one point forced to sleep in the Pre-Lachaise. This grim reality turns into fairy tale when his first book
... (1998 of 17441 Characters)
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