The life of an unknown man : a novel

Shutov, a disenchanted writer, revisits St. Petersburg after twenty years of exile in Paris, hoping to recapture his youth. Instead, he meets Volsky, an old man who tells him his extraordinary story: of surviving the siege of Leningrad, the march on Berlin, and Stalin's purges, and of a transcendent love affair. Volsky's life is an inspiration to Shutov--because for all that he suffered, he knew great happiness. This depth of feeling stands in sharp contrast to the empty lives Shutov encounters in the new Russia, and to his own life, that of just another unknown man.

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TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH.

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Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	FICTION MAK	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

A deeply moving meditation on memory, history, love, and art by the author of Dreams of My Russian Summers

In The Life of an Unknown Man , Andreï Makine explores what truly matters in life through the prism of Russia's past and present.

Shutov, a disenchanted writer, revisits St. Petersburg after twenty years of exile in Paris, hoping to recapture his youth. Instead, he meets Volsky, an old man who tells him his extraordinary story: of surviving the siege of Leningrad, the march on Berlin, and Stalin's purges, and of a transcendent love affair. Volsky's life is an inspiration to Shutov -- because for all that he suffered, he knew great happiness. This depth of feeling stands in sharp contrast to the empty lives Shutov encounters in the new Russia, and to his own life, that of just another unknown man . . .

Author Notes

Andrei Makine was born in Siberia in 1957. Although raised in the Soviet Union, he learned about France and came to love that country through the stories told by his French grandmother. He now lives in Paris himself, having been granted political asylum by France in 1987, and writes in French.

His grandmother figures prominently in the autobiographical novel, "Dreams of My Russian Summers," for which Makine received both the Goncourt Prize and the Medicis Prize, becoming the first author to simultaneously receive both of these prestigious French awards. In the U.S., the English translation of "Dreams of My Russian Summers" has also received recognition, including the Boston Book Review Fiction Prize and the Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year award.

Andrei Makine is also the author of "Once Upon the River Love" and "The Crime of Olga Arbelina."

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (3)

Kirkus Review

Makine presents a story within a story and thus winds up focusing on the lives of two "unknown men." Ivan Shutov has been living in Paris for 20 years but has had only desultory success as a writer. Three years after he wrote a novel about Afghanistan, tensions flared up again in the region, so he was flattered to be invited as a guest on a television show, but his performance there left much to be desired. Meanwhile, his personal life is in shambles, for his girlfriend La, half the age of the 50-year-old Shutov, is calling it quits. (As a parting, sarcastic shot she points out that his name in Russian means "clown," a move Shutov determines is not helpful for his self-esteem.) He had tried to capture some romance in the relationship by comparing their love to that found in Chekhov, but a nice irony is that the Chekhov story that he keeps alluding to is entitled "A Little Joke." Shutov decides to return to St. Petersburg, in part to find his former lover, Yana, in the hope of rekindling the old flame. Instead, he gets much more than he expected by meeting Georgy Volsky in the boardinghouse where he's staying. Volsky is an old man who lived through the siege of Leningrad and is now primarily known for being mute, but he opens up to Shutov, spinning out a tale of war, trauma, love and terrible beauty. He survived the siege both because of his devotion to his art (he's a singer) and to his love, Mila, though in the Stalinist era they were both arrested on trumped charges of crimes against the Soviet state. Volsky's quiet dignity ultimately helps Shutov see some of the superficiality of his own life. A lyrical little novel about hope triumphing over adversity.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Makine, winner of France's most prestigious literary awards, the Prix Goncourt and Prix Medicis, portrays a disillusioned Russian writer, Shutov, who has lived in Paris for 20 years, where his love affair with young Lea is near collapse. Determined to leave before Lea can properly end things, he returns to Saint Petersburg with plans to connect with an old friend, Yana. He arrives to find the city mobbed with revelers during its tercentenary festivities and Yana as the new owner of a communal apartment building. Among the current tenants to be relocated is an old man, Volsky, who, when he and Shutov find themselves alone one night, suddenly begins to share his harrowing past, from his survival of the brutal 1941 siege of Leningrad, to his time as a soldier in the Battle of Kursk, to his arrest and imprisonment under the Stalin regime. The undercurrent shaping Volsky's past is the love story between him and classmate Mila, both determined to endure the horrors they faced. Makine expertly contrasts Volsky's intimate tales with Shutov's view of contemporary Russia.--Strauss, Leah Copyright 2010 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Shutov is a has-been Russian emigre writer living in Paris whose very name means "clown," as his much younger French girlfriend derisively points out before dumping him. To recover, he decides to return to Saint Petersburg for the city's 300th-anniversary celebration. Staying with newly rich Yana, a tenderly remembered friend too self-involved to have much time for him, Shutov comes across the elderly Volsky-a leftover tenant, soon to be evicted, living in one of the many rooms from which Yana's apartments has been fashioned. Volsky tells him a heartrending (and heartrendingly rendered) tale of Leningrad during and after the siege, when a young, hopeful Volsky falls in love with fellow singer Mila. Together they brave the awful years of the siege-in one riveting scene, a half-starved chorus sings the "Internationale" on the battlefield itself. What happens after the war is even worse. VERDICT The pointed contrast to our soulless times could have seemed too obviously drawn, but in his deceptively simple, suffused language (there's real iron underneath), Makine (Dreams of My Russian Summer) helps us relive an awful moment in the 20th century. A humbling read. [See Prepub Alert, 12/5/11.]-Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Reviews (3)

Kirkus Review

Booklist Review

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