- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: Sceptre; New Ed edition (21 Feb 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0340794364
- ISBN-13: 978-0340794364
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 195,232 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
'A beautifully written, all-engrossing, compassionate elegy for a dying empire. I cannot think of a book I have enjoyed more in the past year.' (Toby Clements, Daily Telegraph )
'A novel remarkable for its combination of grandeur and extreme concision ... [a] memorable depiction of a Dostoevskian world of good, evil and the ever-present possibility of redemption ... an awesome achievement, head and shoulders above any novel that I have read so far this year' (Francis King, Literary Review )
'A luminous, beautifully crafted new novel by much-praised Russian emigre author Makine ... Each temporal leap the novel makes illuminates and defines its crucial events ... Makine writes lyrically, baring his struggling characters' emotions and vivifying their oft-chaotic backdrops with equal brio. The arc of the novel shows, above all, that life patterns repeat themselves; we watch the same conflicts playing themselves out in three life stories ... Displays the sensitivity and honesty of his acclaimed previous works.' (Publishers Weekly (starred preview) )
'Makine's eye for the telling detail of battle or the first stirring of romance is reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje' (Tim Adams, Observer )
'Makine has already established his readership. Powerful and intelligent, Requiem for the East, with its elegiac evocation of a past age, should extend that readership still further.' (Alastair Sooke, Times Literary Supplement )
'A powerful, passionate piece, epic in scope' (David Robson, Sunday Telegraph )
'Subtly allusive and deceptively lyrical ... Makine manages the different strands of the story with great skill' (Robin Buss, Independent on Sunday )
'A major writer in the grand tradition of European literature, to which few, if any, contemporary English novelists can ever hope to belong' (Sebastian Shakespeare, Literary Review [Once Upon )
'This book is a requiem for many things: not only for the Soviet Union but for love found and lost, for identity and truth' (The Good Book Guide, London )
'A slow burner, this - but burn it does ... the result is a requiem indeed, with all its beauty tied up in sadness.' (Guardian )
'Engrossing ... a compassionate elegy for a dying empire.' (Telegraph Summer Reading Paperback Choice )
'A novel remarkable for its combination of grandeur and extreme concision ... [a] memorable depiction of a Dostoevskian world of good, evil and the ever-present possibility of redemption ... an awesome achievement, head and shoulders above any novel that I have read so far this year' (Francis King, Literary Review )
'A luminous, beautifully crafted new novel by much-praised Russian emigre author Makine ... Each temporal leap the novel makes illuminates and defines its crucial events ... Makine writes lyrically, baring his struggling characters' emotions and vivifying their oft-chaotic backdrops with equal brio. The arc of the novel shows, above all, that life patterns repeat themselves; we watch the same conflicts playing themselves out in three life stories ... Displays the sensitivity and honesty of his acclaimed previous works.' (Publishers Weekly (starred preview) )
'Makine's eye for the telling detail of battle or the first stirring of romance is reminiscent of Michael Ondaatje' (Tim Adams, Observer )
'Makine has already established his readership. Powerful and intelligent, Requiem for the East, with its elegiac evocation of a past age, should extend that readership still further.' (Alastair Sooke, Times Literary Supplement )
'A powerful, passionate piece, epic in scope' (David Robson, Sunday Telegraph )
'Subtly allusive and deceptively lyrical ... Makine manages the different strands of the story with great skill' (Robin Buss, Independent on Sunday )
'A major writer in the grand tradition of European literature, to which few, if any, contemporary English novelists can ever hope to belong' (Sebastian Shakespeare, Literary Review [Once Upon )
'This book is a requiem for many things: not only for the Soviet Union but for love found and lost, for identity and truth' (The Good Book Guide, London )
'A slow burner, this - but burn it does ... the result is a requiem indeed, with all its beauty tied up in sadness.' (Guardian )
'Engrossing ... a compassionate elegy for a dying empire.' (Telegraph Summer Reading Paperback Choice )
Frances King, Literary Review
An awesome achievement, head and shoulders above any novel that I have read so far this year.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A superb piece of story-telling; beautifully written and paced. Two couples life stories are told across the time of the Soviet union and into the present. Sad, simple but multi-layered and unput-downable.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It's a requirement of the modern post-soviet novel that it has a certain ambivalence towards the USSR, and this well-written book does it better than most. There is plenty of anti-soviet and anti-Communist loathing, but also some understanding of why people for felt loyalty to, if not love for the soviet union.
That said, I don't think this is as great as other reviewers find it. Vassily Grossman, for example, does the ambivalence so much better - this is too much like a modern Zhivago, with not much understanding of what the revolution was for or what the USSR meant to so many.
That said, I don't think this is as great as other reviewers find it. Vassily Grossman, for example, does the ambivalence so much better - this is too much like a modern Zhivago, with not much understanding of what the revolution was for or what the USSR meant to so many.
9 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I am yet to find a person who does not find Andrei Makine's novels to be anything short of brilliant. He manages to subtly evoke the most tender of emotions and the most tragic political situations with little more than a description of the narrators surroundings, a gift which precious few writers are endowed. If that were not enough to make a great book, the fact that, by way of a meticulously realised attack on modern day historical misrepresentation, the authour manages to weave a contemporary significance into his work certainly is. For me, Makine's subject is somewhat akin to that of W. G. Sebald's writing - themes of love and loss poetically drawn out through dense prose. But Makine is far more accesible, far more readable, and I would argue, much better for it.
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