Books
by Andrei Makine
|
Le Testament Français |
Prize-winning semi-autobiographical novel by a Russian who defected to Paris in 1987. Its dream-like atmosphere reflects the subject matter of double identities - Russian and French - recounted through the interaction between a boy and his French grandmother, between memory and imagination. A 'clever' book.
(Annabel Bedini - bwl 11 October 2001) |
|
|
Le Testament Français: translated by Geoffrey Strachan |
A Russian exile living in a Paris cemetery, Makine's haunting autobiographical novel is a collection of childhood and adolescent memories. Through Charlotte, his half-French grandmother with her suitcase full of stories, he learns what it was like to live in Stalin's Russia and it is she who changes his perspective of everything. Written in French, it was only when he pretended his work was translated from Russian that he was published in France.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 67 Winter 2013) |
|
|
|
