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The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme

On sale

2nd January 2006

Price: £9.99

Selected:  Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780340831267

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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.

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Reviews

Francis King, Books of the Year, <i>Spectator</i>
The year's finest novel . . . a truly remarkable achievement. Makine will surely one day win the Nobel Prize.
<i>Spectator</i>
Undisputedly a novelist of genius . . . a remarkable work
<i>Sunday Herald</i>
One of the most extraordinary novels I've read for a long time . . . endlessly fascinating and beautifully written
Andrey Kurkov, <i>Guardian</i>
Hold[s] the reader in an emotional captivity from which there is no escape till long after the book has been put down
Allan Massie, <i>Literary Review</i>
This is a novel to read, and read again, with ever-deepening admiration.
<i>Herald</i>
One of the greatest European novelists of our time . . . When you leave a Makine novel, you are simultaneously bereft and enriched.
<i>Daily Mail</i>
With remarkable concision, he takes what could be vast and weighty topics - nationality, identity, memory and truth - and creates a series of unforgettable images and incidents.
George Rosie, Books of the Year, <i>Sunday Herald</i>
'I was mightily impressed by The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme . . . it's beautifully crafted and still resonates. A modern masterpiece."
Boyd Tonkin, <i> Independent </i>
'Makine packs great steppes-full of history into compact, bejewelled boxes of prose... An epic novel in - perfect - miniature.'