The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme by Andrei Makine

The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme by Andrei Makine

In present-day France a Russian writer recalls his harsh childhood at a Stalingrad orphanage in the 1960s and the old Frenchwoman, a family friend, whose tales fed his dreams of a better world. One story in particular has stayed with him: that of her brief, passionate affair, during World War II, with the French fighter pilot Jacques Dorme, who subsequently died in a plane crash in the Siberian mountains. So the narrator decides to retrace Jacques Dorme's steps, beginning a journey which leads him not only to revisit the land of his birth but also to see his adopted homeland in an unflattering new light. A profound and moving novel about the dangers of ideology and of war, delivered with humour, sensuousness and great lyricism.

'The year's finest novel. . a truly remarkable achievement. Makine will surely one day win the Nobel Prize.' - Francis King, Books of the Year, Spectator

The skill with which [the novel is] woven together is uncanny, as uncanny as the ease with which he slides from one mood to another ... There is humour here, too, and a succession of short scenes so vividly realised that you seem to be partaking of the experience ... This is a novel to read, and read again, with ever-deepening admiration. - Allan Massie, Scotsman

The novel pulls off the difficult feat of being both lyrical and taut. It is also cleverly structured, with an impressively resonant ending. - Sunday Telegraph

Makine specialises (like one of his inspirations, Vladamir Nabokov) in the epiphanic moment that redeems the horror of actual time. - Sunday Times

Each of his taut, atmospheric works achieves an epic grandeur. Here is an artist blessed with vision, a grasp of history and lyric grace . . . Makine continues to bring the ease of Chekhov, a balance of the past with the present, and his own limpid allure to the contemporary European novel. - Eileen Battersby, Irish Times

Poignant . . . an elegiac reminiscence of a boyhood passed under the spell of Alexandra's brief romance with the mysterious pilot . . . [a]meticulously rendered story - James Francken, Daily Telegraph

Andrei Makine was born in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia in 1957, but has lived in France since seeking asylum there in 1987. His first novel, A Hero's Daughter, was published in 1990 and was followed by Confessions of a Lapsed Standard-Bearer and Once Upon the River Love. Then in 1995 his fourth novel, Le Testament Francais, became the unprecedented winner of both the Prix Goncourt and Prix Medicis and has gone on to sell over a million copies in France alone, and to be published in translation in twenty-nine countries. Its translation into English by Geoffrey Strachan, published by Sceptre in 1997, also won the Scott Moncrieff Prize. Since then Andrei Makine has published The Crime of Olga Arbyelina, Requiem for the East and A Lif's Music, which won the Grand Prix RTL-Lire.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780340831250
ISBN 10	0340831251
Title	The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme
Author	Andrei Makine
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Hodder & Stoughton
Year published	2005-04-11
Number of pages	192
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.