Volume 44, Number 18 · November 20, 1997
Love Story
By Tatyana Tolstaya
Dreams of My Russian Summers
by Andreï Makine, Translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan
Arcade, 241 pp., $23.95
Russian literature may take pride in a strange success: Andreï Makine, a Russian of indeterminate French origin, was awarded two of the most prestigious literary prizes for a book written in French, in France, and about France—a book which is nonetheless quintessentially Russian. In our time, it seems, you have to be born Russian, spend thirty years of your life in Russia, a country where cruelty and reverie form a paradoxical unity (this, of course, is a cliché, but, like all clichés, it's true) in order to hallucinate with such power and passion, in order to create a fabulous country—a nonexistent France—from words and dreams.
Review, 2697 words
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