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The Life of an Unknown Man
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 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 . . .
194 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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1166 people want to read
About the author
Andreï Makine
39 books391 followersAndreï Makine was born in Krasnoyarsk, Soviet Union on 10 September 1957 and grew up in city of Penza, a provincial town about 440 miles south-east of Moscow. As a boy, having acquired familiarity with France and its language from his French-born grandmother (it is not certain whether Makine had a French grandmother; in later interviews he claimed to have learnt French from a friend), he wrote poems in both French and his native Russian.
In 1987, he went to France as member of teacher's exchange program and decided to stay. He was granted political asylum and was determined to make a living as a writer in French. However, Makine had to present his first manuscripts as translations from Russian to overcome publishers' skepticism that a newly arrived exile could write so fluently in a second language. After disappointing reactions to his first two novels, it took eight months to find a publisher for his fourth, Le testament français. Finally published in 1995 in France, the novel became the first in history to win both the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Medicis plus the Goncourt des Lycéens.
In 1987, he went to France as member of teacher's exchange program and decided to stay. He was granted political asylum and was determined to make a living as a writer in French. However, Makine had to present his first manuscripts as translations from Russian to overcome publishers' skepticism that a newly arrived exile could write so fluently in a second language. After disappointing reactions to his first two novels, it took eight months to find a publisher for his fourth, Le testament français. Finally published in 1995 in France, the novel became the first in history to win both the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Medicis plus the Goncourt des Lycéens.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 124 reviews
October 29, 2019
There is so much to say about this novel, that I am completely bereft of words. There are so many beautiful extracts to quote that I had best not quote any. I am deeply impressed by this novel. Parts III, IV and V were particularly poignant. Whew! Deep breath...
February 10, 2021
Reread Feb 2021 for a discussion in the 21st Century Literature group.
New review Feb 2021:
When I first read this book in 2014, I had never read Makine and knew very little about him, so coming back to it nearly 7 years later having read most of his other novels was an interesting exercise. There is still plenty to like, but I can see the authorial hand a little more.
The book is in five parts. In the first, we meet the main protagonist Ivan Shutov, a Russian emigre writer living in Paris, who must have elements of self-parody. Shutov has just been left by his much younger French partner Léa, and is coming to terms with that, largely by remembering conversations about literature. He is obsessed by a particular Chekhov story which becomes a recurrent motif in the book. The highlight of this section is a very funny parody of a French literary TV discussion. Rather than face Léa as she collects her last belongings from his flat, Shutov books a flight to St Petersburg where he plans to meet an old flame.
The second part describes Shutov's experiences on arriving in St Petersburg during the city's 300th anniversary celebrations. His friend Yana is now very rich, and puts him up in her new house, an opulent conversion of a number of old flats, but is a busy woman with very little time to spend with him. Shutov finds himself in a city unrecognisable from the Leningrad he remembers, surrounded by people who he has nothing in common with living a lifestyle he cannot comprehend. All but one of the flats in Yana's house have been vacated, but one is still occupied by Volsky, a mostly bed-ridden old man who Yana and her son believe to be deaf and dumb. Left to keep an eye on Volsky on his final night before being sent to an institution while Yana's son goes out, Shutov becomes aware that he is neither deaf nor dumb, and they start a conversation.
The third and fourth parts describe the life story Volsky recounts to Shutov. Volsky is a veteran of the siege of Leningrad. During the siege he meets Mila, and they join a theatre company while also participating in the defence of the city. Makine's description of the horrors of the siege will be familiar territory for those who read a lot of books about Russia, and is obviously not first hand, but that doesn't make it any less moving. Eventually Volsky is called away on active service elsewhere, and at the end of the war he returns to the city in search of Mila.
The fourth part sees Volsky find Mila, who has been trying to look after orphaned children as the siege continued and resorted to prostitution to feed them and keep them alive. They find an abandoned house on a former battlefield near the city and find jobs nearby. They conceive a plan to rescue some of Mila's orphans and extend the house into their own orphanage, but their activity comes under suspicion and both are arrested, making a promise to find one another by looking at the sky. On his release, Volsky discovers that Mila's sentence was the infamous 10 years without right of correspondence, i.e. immediate execution. His redemption comes through another orphanage, a place where the Soviet authorities effectively abandoned disabled children, where he organises theatrical performances.
In the final part of the book, Shutov decides to book a taxi to take Volsky to visit some of the scenes he remembers for a final time, discovering that very little remains apart from some trees he planted. With Volsky gone, Shutov cannot face remaining in the city, booking an early return to France, where he rereads the Chekhov story and realises that his romantic memory of it was incorrect. A few months later he hears that Volsky has died, and returns to Russia to visit the grave. Many of the other graves there are simply labelled U.M. or U.W., which accounts for the title.
As always, Makine distils the essence of his stories into very readable prose, and has an eye for a haunting image. Unlike many of his books, this book is narrated by an omniscient third person, though it is effectively from Shutov's perspective.
I am looking forward to discussing this book with the 21st Century Literature group starting next week.
Original short review from 2014:
I picked this up on a whim, but was hugely impressed, as the book is both moving and entertaining. The story starts as an examination of the emptiness of the life of the protagonist Shutov, a middle aged Russian writer in Paris. The story gets going once the action moves to Russia, and the core of the book is the account of Volsky, an old man he meets there, who is a survivor of the siege of Leningrad, which is described in some detail and contrasted with the vacuousness of the lifestyles of the rich younger Russians he meets.
New review Feb 2021:
When I first read this book in 2014, I had never read Makine and knew very little about him, so coming back to it nearly 7 years later having read most of his other novels was an interesting exercise. There is still plenty to like, but I can see the authorial hand a little more.
The book is in five parts. In the first, we meet the main protagonist Ivan Shutov, a Russian emigre writer living in Paris, who must have elements of self-parody. Shutov has just been left by his much younger French partner Léa, and is coming to terms with that, largely by remembering conversations about literature. He is obsessed by a particular Chekhov story which becomes a recurrent motif in the book. The highlight of this section is a very funny parody of a French literary TV discussion. Rather than face Léa as she collects her last belongings from his flat, Shutov books a flight to St Petersburg where he plans to meet an old flame.
The second part describes Shutov's experiences on arriving in St Petersburg during the city's 300th anniversary celebrations. His friend Yana is now very rich, and puts him up in her new house, an opulent conversion of a number of old flats, but is a busy woman with very little time to spend with him. Shutov finds himself in a city unrecognisable from the Leningrad he remembers, surrounded by people who he has nothing in common with living a lifestyle he cannot comprehend. All but one of the flats in Yana's house have been vacated, but one is still occupied by Volsky, a mostly bed-ridden old man who Yana and her son believe to be deaf and dumb. Left to keep an eye on Volsky on his final night before being sent to an institution while Yana's son goes out, Shutov becomes aware that he is neither deaf nor dumb, and they start a conversation.
The third and fourth parts describe the life story Volsky recounts to Shutov. Volsky is a veteran of the siege of Leningrad. During the siege he meets Mila, and they join a theatre company while also participating in the defence of the city. Makine's description of the horrors of the siege will be familiar territory for those who read a lot of books about Russia, and is obviously not first hand, but that doesn't make it any less moving. Eventually Volsky is called away on active service elsewhere, and at the end of the war he returns to the city in search of Mila.
The fourth part sees Volsky find Mila, who has been trying to look after orphaned children as the siege continued and resorted to prostitution to feed them and keep them alive. They find an abandoned house on a former battlefield near the city and find jobs nearby. They conceive a plan to rescue some of Mila's orphans and extend the house into their own orphanage, but their activity comes under suspicion and both are arrested, making a promise to find one another by looking at the sky. On his release, Volsky discovers that Mila's sentence was the infamous 10 years without right of correspondence, i.e. immediate execution. His redemption comes through another orphanage, a place where the Soviet authorities effectively abandoned disabled children, where he organises theatrical performances.
In the final part of the book, Shutov decides to book a taxi to take Volsky to visit some of the scenes he remembers for a final time, discovering that very little remains apart from some trees he planted. With Volsky gone, Shutov cannot face remaining in the city, booking an early return to France, where he rereads the Chekhov story and realises that his romantic memory of it was incorrect. A few months later he hears that Volsky has died, and returns to Russia to visit the grave. Many of the other graves there are simply labelled U.M. or U.W., which accounts for the title.
As always, Makine distils the essence of his stories into very readable prose, and has an eye for a haunting image. Unlike many of his books, this book is narrated by an omniscient third person, though it is effectively from Shutov's perspective.
I am looking forward to discussing this book with the 21st Century Literature group starting next week.
Original short review from 2014:
I picked this up on a whim, but was hugely impressed, as the book is both moving and entertaining. The story starts as an examination of the emptiness of the life of the protagonist Shutov, a middle aged Russian writer in Paris. The story gets going once the action moves to Russia, and the core of the book is the account of Volsky, an old man he meets there, who is a survivor of the siege of Leningrad, which is described in some detail and contrasted with the vacuousness of the lifestyles of the rich younger Russians he meets.
April 2, 2024
Rating 2.5 stars. This book started off very strong, with an evocation of the very Westernized/Americanized life in Russia after the collapse of the communist regime in 1990-1991. Andreï Makine (himself of Russian descent) has the troubled writer-dissident Shutov travel from Paris to St. Petersburg. To his disgust, Shutov records how the country has changed. This is all very interestingly depicted. But then, about 100 pages in, we suddenly get the life story of George Volsky, a war veteran who endured the siege of Leningrad (the name of St-Petersburg in Sovjet times) during the Second World War. This is told in a completely different key, over-sentimental, almost in the style of the patriotic social realist films of the Soviet era. The bond with his beloved Mila in particular is highlighted in an exaggeratedly pathetic way. Only the harrowing fate of the afflicted population of Leningrad, and the Stalinist persecutions that resumed in full force after the war, still give this book an interesting documentary edge. In many ways – certainly in terms of structure and style – this is a more extensive copy of an early work by Makine, The Music of a Life: A Novel. No, this didn't appeal to me, and that's a shame, because the author's central message – showing how a little man maintains his humanity in the midst of misery and evil forces – is quite commendable.
February 24, 2021
“In war the most testing moments are those of peace, for a dead man lying in the grass makes the living see the world as it would be, but for their folly.”
4.5 stars. (because of the beginning but I still have tears in my eyes and my heart hurts so I'm rounding up)
It’s always the five-star reads that are the hardest to write reviews for. It’s easy to point to what you don’t like in a book but how do you write about the things you like, the things you love? Especially when I had so much I didn’t initially like about this book!
The Life of an Unknown Man really and truly crept up on me. You know the feeling when you finish a book and think now what? You think how do you go back to everyday life as if nothing happened? This book does that. It's so much in such few pages. The writing is deceptively simple, the start painfully slow (I actually DNFed this, then pretended I didn't, then nearly DNFed it a few more times but I am so glad I didn't), yet once it hits part III (a little less than halfway through the book), it's unputdownable. I didn't even realize how quickly I flew through the book after that mark. It took me about twenty days to get through a little less than half of the book and then a single day to finish the rest. I didn’t sleep. I remember the sun creeping into my room as I finished the last few pages. This isn’t a book that’s gripping with action or a plot that you just need to keep reading to find out, it’s … quieter. Softer. But no less enthralling.
“During those May days the war ended for them. One year after the end of the war.”
Andrei Makine (and the translator, because at no point did this book feel like a translation) is a master of words. I’m haunted by the quiet depictions of war and the lives touched by it in this book. The people who survived it, each scarred differently. I can't stop thinking about the strength of people, the beauty in small and unassuming places. I'm at a loss for proper words to truly describe what this story did to me. Wow. Just. Wow. War isn’t easy to write about but I think the aftermath is even harder to properly show. It’s harder to show the different kinds of fighters, the ones who may not have been on the front lines, but they fought, they kept others alive, they gave others hope.
“Everyone strove for the performances to go on as before. But, of course, everything was very different. They acted by candlelight in an auditorium where it was minus twenty degrees. Often the show was interrupted by an air raid siren. The audience would go down into the basement, those who no longer had the strength to do so remaining huddled in their seats, staring at the stage emptied by the sound of bombing… Applause was no longer heard. Too weak, their hands frozen in mittens, people would bow to thank the actors. This silent gratitude was more touching than any number of ovations.”
This book is unflinching in its portrayal of the hardships. I felt the biting Russian cold even burrowed beneath a ton of blankets, I heard the hunger and pure exhaustion (the kind that’s embedded deep in your bones) in the silent auditoriums, I even felt the grief and fear, the desperation in every page. But I also saw the glimpses of hope, the little miracles, the bigger miracles in those little miracles, the power of love and the goodness of people. Writing one is easy, but having both in the same book, same chapter, same breath? I don’t know how he did it but he did and I’m left a little breathless.
“It is a song that gives back a forgotten, primal meaning to all that he can see: the earth, laden with dead, and yet so light, so full of springtime life, the ruins of an old izba, the imagined radiance of those who lived there and loved one another beneath its roof… And this sky, beginning to turn pale, which Shutov will never look at again the way he did before.”
All of this to say please please push through that first bit because it is so so worth it. I loved it so much that despite hating the first half I still gave this book five stars (and I'm stingy with my five stars). I’m so glad I came across this gem and can’t wait until I pick up Makine’s other works (I’m not kidding, I’ve already purchased his Dreams of my Russian Summers). What a way to start the reading year.
“He has never seen so much of the sky in a single glance before.”
November 15, 2010
The life-sustaining power of love and music is a central theme in Andrei Makine's most recent novel, "The Life of an Unknown Man". Nostalgia for a happier and innocent past has overcome fifty-something writer Ivan Choutov, a former Soviet dissident, living for the last twenty years in Paris. His work and life appear to be at a standstill. His much younger girlfriend is moving out, leaving him to ponder his own young love from his past life in Leningrad. Overcoming his long-held reluctance to reconnect with his hometown, he returns to St. Petersburg. And here the real story, the story within a story, emerges. Makine, acknowledged master of exploring the innermost nooks and pathways of the human heart, has reached a new level of depths with this most powerful, deeply stirring and far reaching exploration of the human condition set against the backdrop of historical times of hardship and dangers, but also of endurance, determination and hope.
Revisiting St. Petersburg after twenty years is a shock to Choutov. There is little that reminds him of the place he knew, the Russia he had been dreaming of: "a life cradled by beloved poems; a park under the golden canopy of leaves, a woman, walking in silence, like the heroine of a poem."*) His own youth's heroine, the girl of his melancholy dreams, has grown into a modern business woman with no time for the "old" romantic visitor. The depiction of the modern St. Petersburg, vibrant, youthful, fast-paced and a bit crazy - seemingly more "westernized" than the cities of Western Europe - is convincingly realistic. Wandering the streets of the festive city, Choutov, however, feels increasingly alienated and discouraged. Where to go from here, where to find some inner peace and, above all, his emotional home? Have Russians like him lost more with the break-up of the Soviet Union than they bargained for? How to bring together this new Russia with the essence of the Russian soul and identity?
A chance encounter on his last evening in the city, while not necessarily bringing easy answers or solutions, open a new path for Choutov to see his world and that of his city with a deeper understanding and appreciation. The second narrative that the encounter enables takes Choutov and the reader back to the devastating times of the 900-day Leningrad Blockade (1941-44), and, after a lull in the aftermath of the defeat of the German army, to the resumption of the Stalinist purges. The heart wrenching stories of the struggle for survival of the local population is epitomized by the story of a young couple, Volski and Mila. They stand for the hundreds of thousands who were lost in those troubling times, an "unknown man" and an "unknown woman".
Without wanting to reveal much of the extraordinary account that forms the centre of Makine's novel, one of many deeply affecting scenarios stands for many: Volski and Mila, both musicians, have joined a small choir that sings and plays all over the encircled city to bring some lighter moments to the starving and despairing. One day they are asked to sing close to the frontline, to support the local defence forces and to confuse the Germans on the other side of the Neva river...
Makine's ability to speak in the voice of Volski, to recount the deep scars to body and mind, to reflect on his life's ups and downs, is extraordinary. The emotional depth of his character and his overwhelming belief in the power of love, that is often closely connected to the music on his lips or in his heart, makes Volski a profound human being who will linger in the reader's mind long after the book is closed. For me, having read a number or Makine's novels, both in English and the original French, "The Life of an Unknown Man" stands out as one of his most personal and intimate, yet powerful in his painting the broader canvass of a very significant and painful period of recent Russian history. *)All translations are mine.
Revisiting St. Petersburg after twenty years is a shock to Choutov. There is little that reminds him of the place he knew, the Russia he had been dreaming of: "a life cradled by beloved poems; a park under the golden canopy of leaves, a woman, walking in silence, like the heroine of a poem."*) His own youth's heroine, the girl of his melancholy dreams, has grown into a modern business woman with no time for the "old" romantic visitor. The depiction of the modern St. Petersburg, vibrant, youthful, fast-paced and a bit crazy - seemingly more "westernized" than the cities of Western Europe - is convincingly realistic. Wandering the streets of the festive city, Choutov, however, feels increasingly alienated and discouraged. Where to go from here, where to find some inner peace and, above all, his emotional home? Have Russians like him lost more with the break-up of the Soviet Union than they bargained for? How to bring together this new Russia with the essence of the Russian soul and identity?
A chance encounter on his last evening in the city, while not necessarily bringing easy answers or solutions, open a new path for Choutov to see his world and that of his city with a deeper understanding and appreciation. The second narrative that the encounter enables takes Choutov and the reader back to the devastating times of the 900-day Leningrad Blockade (1941-44), and, after a lull in the aftermath of the defeat of the German army, to the resumption of the Stalinist purges. The heart wrenching stories of the struggle for survival of the local population is epitomized by the story of a young couple, Volski and Mila. They stand for the hundreds of thousands who were lost in those troubling times, an "unknown man" and an "unknown woman".
Without wanting to reveal much of the extraordinary account that forms the centre of Makine's novel, one of many deeply affecting scenarios stands for many: Volski and Mila, both musicians, have joined a small choir that sings and plays all over the encircled city to bring some lighter moments to the starving and despairing. One day they are asked to sing close to the frontline, to support the local defence forces and to confuse the Germans on the other side of the Neva river...
Makine's ability to speak in the voice of Volski, to recount the deep scars to body and mind, to reflect on his life's ups and downs, is extraordinary. The emotional depth of his character and his overwhelming belief in the power of love, that is often closely connected to the music on his lips or in his heart, makes Volski a profound human being who will linger in the reader's mind long after the book is closed. For me, having read a number or Makine's novels, both in English and the original French, "The Life of an Unknown Man" stands out as one of his most personal and intimate, yet powerful in his painting the broader canvass of a very significant and painful period of recent Russian history. *)All translations are mine.
June 15, 2015
Author Andreï Makine is Russian-born but has lived in France since the 1980s and writes in French. His main character in this novel, Ivan Shutov, is also a Russian born writer who has lived in France since the 80s, although unlike his creator, Shutov is a rather unsuccessful writer. The novel, which is in 5 parts, opens with Shutov feeling distinctly sorry for himself having been dumped by his much younger French girlfriend. After a lot of self-indulgent whining (which I think the author introduces as a contrast to what comes later), Shutov decides, on a whim, to visit his old home city of St. Petersburg and contact Yana, an old flame from his youth. This opens the second part of the novel, as Shutov, a "Soviet Dinosaur" finds the new Russia so unfamiliar that he struggles to find Russian words to describe much of what he encounters. He contacts Yana, who has become a smart, well-dressed and wealthy businesswoman. Although welcoming to her old acquaintance, she spends most of her time on her mobile and only half-listens to Shutov's nostalgic ramblings. One of her projects is to remove the residents of a former workers' communal apartment to create an oversized private residence. Most of the residents have already left having been offered "swaps" but one remains, a bedridden old man whose transfer to a care home has been delayed by some bureaucratic glitch. Shutov gets roped into looking after the old man on his last night in the apartment. This opens Part 3 as the old man, Volsky, tells Shutov the story of his extraordinary life, taking in the years of WWII and his life in the post-war Soviet Union. By the end, Shutov's self-pitying is put into perspective. I read this novel in its English translation, which is beautifully written, and the story itself is very moving.
Volsky's story is of course fiction, but many of those born in the Soviet Union in the first half of the last century would have experienced famine, a cataclysmic war and a life under constant threat of arbitrary arrest and torture. Their stories, nearly incredible whilst being nothing unusual, perished or will perish along with the lives of the "unknown" people who lived them, but in some way Andreï Makine has written the story of all of them. A novel that is simultaneously an adventure story, a love story and a book about what matters in life.
Volsky's story is of course fiction, but many of those born in the Soviet Union in the first half of the last century would have experienced famine, a cataclysmic war and a life under constant threat of arbitrary arrest and torture. Their stories, nearly incredible whilst being nothing unusual, perished or will perish along with the lives of the "unknown" people who lived them, but in some way Andreï Makine has written the story of all of them. A novel that is simultaneously an adventure story, a love story and a book about what matters in life.
July 12, 2015
The Life of An Unknown Man begins with the story of Shutov, a 50-something Russian émigré writer living in Paris, who is painfully aware that he is:
“… no more than a marginal figure. And even his past as a dissident, which in the old days had given Shutov a certain aura, was becoming a flaw, or at least a sign of how prehistoric he was: just think, a dissident from the eighties of the previous century, an opposition figure exiled from a country that had since been erased from all the maps!”
Shutov is despondent over the end of his affair with a much younger woman, but it seems that he is not so much mourning his real-life relationship, but a romanticised ideal of love borrowed from Chekhov.
On an impulse, Shutov flies to St Petersburg to rekindle a relationship with his girlfriend of 20 years earlier. But he encounters an older man who has experienced a far deeper and more enduring love…
The narrative then switches to the life of Volsky, who has lived through the Siege of Leningrad, the Battle of Kursk, and the post-war Stalinist purges. His story is by turns harrowing, grotesque, surreal and unbearably sad, as the reader comes to realise that the titular “unknown man” is not Shutov or even Volsky, but the millions of men and women who were sacrificed to the Communist Revolution.
The Life of An Unknown Man delicately interweaves the old and new Russias, and the lives of the individual and the collective. It is very Russian — lyrical, ironic and heartbreaking.
January 23, 2019
A GR friend had recommended this book too me several years ago, and prompted by his other review of Andrei Makine, I thought I better make up some time. Oddly after just reading “The Dreams of the Serpent” a familiar theme emerged - Russia. Whereas “Dreams” retells the political aspect of the Soviet Union, Lenin to Khrushchev, this tale tells a more humble story.
This is the story of simply being human, caught up in a world that seems to change right before one’s eyes. It is the story of love, death, suffering, joys. You know, the real part of life that gets swept away by the brutal machinations of political forces. And this story - a profound story that moves the central character.
Shutov, an Russian emigre writer living in Paris for the last twenty years has a bad break up with his much too young girlfriend. Down on his luck, his latest book rejection in the mail, he goes back to Russia to find an old flame. But this is the 300-anniversary of Saint Petersburg (2003) and, let’s just say the old Soviet world has changed faces for something he doesn’t recognize. In his unhappiness, he meets an old unknown man, a relic from the past. And Volsky tells him his story.
The story is a tough one. The people of Saint Petersburg lost two million in the siege by the Germans, then the purge of Stalin. One bad thing after another. Volsky and his love Mila are challenged like so many.
Andrei Makine invokes Chekhov and Tolstoy but in its heart is a simple tale. It never gets saccharine or melodramatic. Life can truly stomp on us, we lose, we survive, and sometimes it gives back in different ways. We can learn from others. We must seek out what it means to be human. So often all is lost the turmoil, the political reality crushes us. We make what we can out of life.
A powerful story full of life. Nothing wrong with this.
Thanks Nikos.
This is the story of simply being human, caught up in a world that seems to change right before one’s eyes. It is the story of love, death, suffering, joys. You know, the real part of life that gets swept away by the brutal machinations of political forces. And this story - a profound story that moves the central character.
Shutov, an Russian emigre writer living in Paris for the last twenty years has a bad break up with his much too young girlfriend. Down on his luck, his latest book rejection in the mail, he goes back to Russia to find an old flame. But this is the 300-anniversary of Saint Petersburg (2003) and, let’s just say the old Soviet world has changed faces for something he doesn’t recognize. In his unhappiness, he meets an old unknown man, a relic from the past. And Volsky tells him his story.
The story is a tough one. The people of Saint Petersburg lost two million in the siege by the Germans, then the purge of Stalin. One bad thing after another. Volsky and his love Mila are challenged like so many.
Andrei Makine invokes Chekhov and Tolstoy but in its heart is a simple tale. It never gets saccharine or melodramatic. Life can truly stomp on us, we lose, we survive, and sometimes it gives back in different ways. We can learn from others. We must seek out what it means to be human. So often all is lost the turmoil, the political reality crushes us. We make what we can out of life.
A powerful story full of life. Nothing wrong with this.
Thanks Nikos.
April 9, 2021
« Le sacrifice qui avait préservé sa vie lui rappela de nouveau que le mal de ce monde pouvait être battu en brèche para la volonté d’un seul être. »
La stèle sur une tombe qui tente avec deux mots simples de définir toute une vie : impossible d'y parvenir quand l'histoire est connue, la triste et douloureuse histoire de centaines de milliers d'êtres dont le passé refuse d'être oublié. De nouvelles générations, de nouveaux gouvernements, de nouvelles croyances et de nouveaux temps viendront ; de nouveaux pays émergeront, il y aura de nouvelles guerres et même de nouvelles pandémies. Et tout ce défilé de nouveautés servira peut-être à se plonger dans une seule historie, La vie d'un homme inconnu, qui a vécu les horreurs de la guerre pendant le siège de Leningrad et qui aimait profondément une femme. Sa faute ? Se sentir un homme libre dans un pays enchaîné à une idéologie mensongère. Son secret ? De regarder avec intensité le ciel d'une nuit lumineuse, et de trouver parmi toutes les étoiles deux dont l'éclat était exactement le même émanant des yeux de sa bien-aimée.
Avec une écriture profonde et grand lyrisme narratif, Andreï Makine construit une histoire émouvante, à propos de deux hommes dont la rencontre est en fait la rencontre avec un pays et son histoire. Choutov, un admirateur de Tchekhov et de Paris, retourne dans sa ville natale pour rencontrer son passé et se retrouver. L'histoire que Volski lui raconte une nuit va bouleverser sa vie pour toujours. Un roman qui porte certainement les ailes de la grande littérature.
La stèle sur une tombe qui tente avec deux mots simples de définir toute une vie : impossible d'y parvenir quand l'histoire est connue, la triste et douloureuse histoire de centaines de milliers d'êtres dont le passé refuse d'être oublié. De nouvelles générations, de nouveaux gouvernements, de nouvelles croyances et de nouveaux temps viendront ; de nouveaux pays émergeront, il y aura de nouvelles guerres et même de nouvelles pandémies. Et tout ce défilé de nouveautés servira peut-être à se plonger dans une seule historie, La vie d'un homme inconnu, qui a vécu les horreurs de la guerre pendant le siège de Leningrad et qui aimait profondément une femme. Sa faute ? Se sentir un homme libre dans un pays enchaîné à une idéologie mensongère. Son secret ? De regarder avec intensité le ciel d'une nuit lumineuse, et de trouver parmi toutes les étoiles deux dont l'éclat était exactement le même émanant des yeux de sa bien-aimée.
Avec une écriture profonde et grand lyrisme narratif, Andreï Makine construit une histoire émouvante, à propos de deux hommes dont la rencontre est en fait la rencontre avec un pays et son histoire. Choutov, un admirateur de Tchekhov et de Paris, retourne dans sa ville natale pour rencontrer son passé et se retrouver. L'histoire que Volski lui raconte une nuit va bouleverser sa vie pour toujours. Un roman qui porte certainement les ailes de la grande littérature.
May 1, 2014
It's always possible to turn to Andrei Makine for short, deceptively simple books that leave you thinking about deeper topics for days (and rereading deftly crafted lines that resonate with meaning). The Life of an Unknown Man was no different. The main theme of the book is the ignorance of the past (in the most literal sense of the term--ignoring it) as a criticism of today's society, which places so much emphasis on empty distractions.
The book's storyline is wrapped in layers that are breached as the reader gets further into the book. First is a man, stuck in his romanticized past, feeling his age as he is left by a younger woman whose observations and comments represent her inexperience. But then Shutov, the main character, is confronted with both the current reality of the Russia he left behind (which no longer exists and into which he cannot assimilate) and the reality of an unromantic Russia that was before his time--one that he has either forgotten about or that has no relevance when placed beside his own self-pity.
Makine takes the reader carefully and with a little literary guile into the depths of war-time Russia: the hopelessness of war with its homeless children, displaces people, frozen winter, lack of food as well as its aftermath: skulls appearing in a garden; shattered people who have, against all odds, survived, and now must keep surviving; the horrors of the purges; the meaninglessness of labor camps.
From there, the reader must shake off the venture into a terrible past and confront the seemingly benign vapidity of the present. Makine may be sending one of a handful of messages or several messages at once: that we lose something when we forget history; that our present helps us to forget it (and we don't care); that we should abstain from self-pity when we live in a safe environment and have plenty to eat; that we have a voice and we can choose to use it or choose to keep silent; that beauty is found in connections with people rather than in things. It is impossible not to take something away from this book after reading it.
The book's storyline is wrapped in layers that are breached as the reader gets further into the book. First is a man, stuck in his romanticized past, feeling his age as he is left by a younger woman whose observations and comments represent her inexperience. But then Shutov, the main character, is confronted with both the current reality of the Russia he left behind (which no longer exists and into which he cannot assimilate) and the reality of an unromantic Russia that was before his time--one that he has either forgotten about or that has no relevance when placed beside his own self-pity.
Makine takes the reader carefully and with a little literary guile into the depths of war-time Russia: the hopelessness of war with its homeless children, displaces people, frozen winter, lack of food as well as its aftermath: skulls appearing in a garden; shattered people who have, against all odds, survived, and now must keep surviving; the horrors of the purges; the meaninglessness of labor camps.
From there, the reader must shake off the venture into a terrible past and confront the seemingly benign vapidity of the present. Makine may be sending one of a handful of messages or several messages at once: that we lose something when we forget history; that our present helps us to forget it (and we don't care); that we should abstain from self-pity when we live in a safe environment and have plenty to eat; that we have a voice and we can choose to use it or choose to keep silent; that beauty is found in connections with people rather than in things. It is impossible not to take something away from this book after reading it.
November 10, 2019
Andreï Makine, yksi lempikirjailijoistani, miksen ole lukenut häntä vuosiin!
Melkein petyin, kun kirjan aloitti turhamainen, keski-ikäinen, Pariisissa asustava venäläisemigrantti - wanna be -suuri kirjailija. Surkuhupaisa hahmo, mutta ei minkäänlaista syvyyttä tai ahdistusta.
No seurasihan sitä, nimittäin ahdistusta. Hetken mielijohteesta venäläiskirjailija Sutov palaa takaisin Pietariin, kaupunkiin, joka on kolmessakymmenessä vuodessa hylännyt historian, sivistyksen ja syvällisyyden. Mutta myös kieltänyt kansalliset tragediat ja sukupolvien tuskat.
Vieraantuneessa kaupungissa Sutov ajautuu sattumusten kautta tekemisiin mykäksi luullun vanhuksen kanssa ja kuulee hänen tarinansa. Se on sykähdyttävän kaunis tarina rakkaudesta sodan ja vainojen varjossa. Nostalginen, runollinen - ja kyllä, ahdistava.
Kun katsot taivaalle, näet aina rakastettusi katseen.
Kun päätarina pääsee vauhtii, Tuntemattoman miehen elämästä tulee lumoava kirja.
Ja kun se päättyy, tuntuu nyky-Venäjän yläluokan elämäntyyli entistäkin tyhjemmältä.
Ilman ensimmäistä, Pariisiin sijoittuvaa osaa olisin antanut kirjalle viisi tähteä.
Melkein petyin, kun kirjan aloitti turhamainen, keski-ikäinen, Pariisissa asustava venäläisemigrantti - wanna be -suuri kirjailija. Surkuhupaisa hahmo, mutta ei minkäänlaista syvyyttä tai ahdistusta.
No seurasihan sitä, nimittäin ahdistusta. Hetken mielijohteesta venäläiskirjailija Sutov palaa takaisin Pietariin, kaupunkiin, joka on kolmessakymmenessä vuodessa hylännyt historian, sivistyksen ja syvällisyyden. Mutta myös kieltänyt kansalliset tragediat ja sukupolvien tuskat.
Vieraantuneessa kaupungissa Sutov ajautuu sattumusten kautta tekemisiin mykäksi luullun vanhuksen kanssa ja kuulee hänen tarinansa. Se on sykähdyttävän kaunis tarina rakkaudesta sodan ja vainojen varjossa. Nostalginen, runollinen - ja kyllä, ahdistava.
Kun katsot taivaalle, näet aina rakastettusi katseen.
Kun päätarina pääsee vauhtii, Tuntemattoman miehen elämästä tulee lumoava kirja.
Ja kun se päättyy, tuntuu nyky-Venäjän yläluokan elämäntyyli entistäkin tyhjemmältä.
Ilman ensimmäistä, Pariisiin sijoittuvaa osaa olisin antanut kirjalle viisi tähteä.
January 15, 2017
Excellent book. The weakest sections are the ones in the modern world – the Paris scenes reminiscent of Milan Kundera at his worst (and even with a character of the author’s age who manages to attract a woman thirty years younger). Much of the rest of the book covers ground about the Siege of Leningrad familiar from other novels but with Makine’s usual vivid imagery (with a particular emphasis here on Proustian style remembrance of images and especially music) and with the real strength that the narrator realises he is more at home in the vanished Russia of the old man of silent suffering and heroism than he is in the superficial modern world of the new Russian elite (with implicit comparisons drawn between their attitudes – even the way in which they are not truly happy even in their power – and the officialdom of the post war Party).
August 16, 2012
1.3 stars.
The Life of an Unknown Man was unusually unsatisfying: this novel about an emigre writer who lives in France, gets dumped by his young girlfriend, and then takes a trip to Saint Petersburg in the hopes of rekindling a old flame (!) feels obvious, awkward, and sentimental. Unfortunately, even the writer's acquaintance with an elderly veteran of World War 2 and Stalin's camps feels contrived, a clunky novelistic device to give the writer new perspectives on life, and the old man's story and lessons on life felt pasted together from Soviet and Leningrad-Petersburg myth.
(There's more on my blog about The Life of an Unknown Man , here.)
The Life of an Unknown Man was unusually unsatisfying: this novel about an emigre writer who lives in France, gets dumped by his young girlfriend, and then takes a trip to Saint Petersburg in the hopes of rekindling a old flame (!) feels obvious, awkward, and sentimental. Unfortunately, even the writer's acquaintance with an elderly veteran of World War 2 and Stalin's camps feels contrived, a clunky novelistic device to give the writer new perspectives on life, and the old man's story and lessons on life felt pasted together from Soviet and Leningrad-Petersburg myth.
(There's more on my blog about The Life of an Unknown Man , here.)
August 21, 2015
I must admit I didn't know Andrei Makine. This book was quite recently published in my language by my favorite publishing house, I read the summary on the back cover and felt that would be something interesting. It turned out to be an excellent reading which I fully enjoyed. Really good contemporary literature, these kind of books I love to read. It has all these features I admire in books, human characters, strong emotions, great background, nice language. And its size is rather short one, something that makes more impressive how the writer managed to include many layers within its pages. It's a book about loss, memory, history, love, comparing generations. I really liked the author's view over history which is very very objective one. On one hand the main hero who can easily be an alter ego of the author himself looks back in a romantic view his country, while on the other hand he criticise all the negatives.
The first part is about a writer,a Russian emigre in France, rather unsuccessful one, in his 50's who feels desperate after breaking up with his much younger girlfriend. His bad mentality is brilliantly shown in the pages and trying to find some peace for his mind decides to travel to his mother country in hope to meet a love from his young years. Over there he finds himself in front of a country and people who look so different from what he had in his memory and a second disappointment is very close, when he meets a man who tells him his life story. This is the second part, the story of a life of an unknown man, set during WW2 and the years after. And this is a great, powerful and intense story of war, love and faith. I found some scenes sensational.
A great reading, an excellent story, which I would recommend with much pleasure to everyone. Definitely worth to try it.
The first part is about a writer,a Russian emigre in France, rather unsuccessful one, in his 50's who feels desperate after breaking up with his much younger girlfriend. His bad mentality is brilliantly shown in the pages and trying to find some peace for his mind decides to travel to his mother country in hope to meet a love from his young years. Over there he finds himself in front of a country and people who look so different from what he had in his memory and a second disappointment is very close, when he meets a man who tells him his life story. This is the second part, the story of a life of an unknown man, set during WW2 and the years after. And this is a great, powerful and intense story of war, love and faith. I found some scenes sensational.
A great reading, an excellent story, which I would recommend with much pleasure to everyone. Definitely worth to try it.
December 15, 2010
amazing book, I ended up crying. A really moving love story.
September 25, 2018
oh that ending...
He has never seen so much of the sky in a single glance before.
He has never seen so much of the sky in a single glance before.
August 25, 2011
The Life of an Unknown Man is by a Russian emigré who writes in French but it’s a powerful evocation of contemporary Russian life, and how its tragic history lies beneath the glitzy surface of the new Russia.
According to Wikipedia:
Suffering, often as a means of redemption, is a recurrent theme in Russian literature. Fyodor Dostoyevsky in particular is noted for exploring suffering in works such as Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment. Christianity and Christian symbolism are also important themes, notably in the works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov. In the 20th century, suffering as a mechanism of evil was explored by authors such as Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago. A leading Russian literary critic of the 20th century Viktor Shklovsky, in his book, Zoo, or Letters Not About Love, wrote, “Russian literature has a bad tradition. Russian literature is devoted to the description of unsuccessful love affairs.”
From my experience of reading 19th and 20th century Russian literature, this is certainly true, and it’s also true of Makine’s story.
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/201...
According to Wikipedia:
Suffering, often as a means of redemption, is a recurrent theme in Russian literature. Fyodor Dostoyevsky in particular is noted for exploring suffering in works such as Notes from Underground and Crime and Punishment. Christianity and Christian symbolism are also important themes, notably in the works of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov. In the 20th century, suffering as a mechanism of evil was explored by authors such as Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago. A leading Russian literary critic of the 20th century Viktor Shklovsky, in his book, Zoo, or Letters Not About Love, wrote, “Russian literature has a bad tradition. Russian literature is devoted to the description of unsuccessful love affairs.”
From my experience of reading 19th and 20th century Russian literature, this is certainly true, and it’s also true of Makine’s story.
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/201...
August 30, 2014
This book had the most infuriating beginning - there is nothing more pathetic than a middle aged man mooning over past loves and I very nearly gave up on it. However, after about 100 pages the REAL story begins of the tale of the enigmatic mute who lives in a back room. What follows is a very moving account of the reality of Russia during the war together with an uplifting study of the power of music.
November 5, 2014
Absolutely wonderful! I will read every word Makine writes!
January 25, 2021
The book opens with Shutov, a 50ish Russian author living in Paris, bemoaning his loss girlfriend Lea, a woman in her 20's who has left him for a man her own age. It is not hard to see why she left. Shutov feels sorry for himself and his dwindling career. He remembers a Chekov story where a young man whispers I love you to a girl while sledding and feels the same way when he encounters her again 25 years later. Shutov thinks he might have the same experience with a woman (Yana) he had coffee with before he left Russia 25 years ago. He decides to go to Russia to visit her. That's the gist of Part I of this book. I was most unimpressed but at least the chapters were short.
In Part II, Shutov arrives in Russia and finds it a completely different place from the Russia he left. He discovers that his friend Yana is one of the new rich. She owns a chain of hotels and is having a massive residence built out from a score of what had been one-room apartments. It is mostly done except for the room in which one last bedridden resident remains. Shutov stays in the apartment, where Yana's son Vlad, who works in the book business, is working from home and watching over the remaining resident. Shutov finds the new Russia rather appalling. Vlad enlists him to watch over the resident so that he can have a night out. Shutov agrees. He's been told the resident doesn't speak and all he hears from the room is the man turning the pages of a book. Shutov, shocked at what he is seeing on Russia TV, rolls it into the resident's room, clicks through the channels, and bemoans the state of the country. The part ends with the resident speaking. This part was better. Shutov was still unappealing but the portrait of the new Russia was interesting.
Parts III, IV, and V give us the story of the resident -- Georgy Lvovich Volsky -- and this is what makes this book worthwhile. Volsky tells about his life and the love of his life, Mila. They were music students when the siege of Leningrad began. They manage to survive the seige and the war, together at the beginning but then separated. Volsky ends the war as a gunner on the outskirts of Berlin. On return to Leningrad, he hunts for Mila and eventually finds her. Then they are caught up in a purge and sent to different Siberian work camps. But they make a pact before being separated - a pact that Volsky honors still. Volsky's story is moving. It moves Shutov. At the end of Part V, the title becomes clear. The last three parts are wonderfully written - sparse and gut wrenching.
In Part II, Shutov arrives in Russia and finds it a completely different place from the Russia he left. He discovers that his friend Yana is one of the new rich. She owns a chain of hotels and is having a massive residence built out from a score of what had been one-room apartments. It is mostly done except for the room in which one last bedridden resident remains. Shutov stays in the apartment, where Yana's son Vlad, who works in the book business, is working from home and watching over the remaining resident. Shutov finds the new Russia rather appalling. Vlad enlists him to watch over the resident so that he can have a night out. Shutov agrees. He's been told the resident doesn't speak and all he hears from the room is the man turning the pages of a book. Shutov, shocked at what he is seeing on Russia TV, rolls it into the resident's room, clicks through the channels, and bemoans the state of the country. The part ends with the resident speaking. This part was better. Shutov was still unappealing but the portrait of the new Russia was interesting.
Parts III, IV, and V give us the story of the resident -- Georgy Lvovich Volsky -- and this is what makes this book worthwhile. Volsky tells about his life and the love of his life, Mila. They were music students when the siege of Leningrad began. They manage to survive the seige and the war, together at the beginning but then separated. Volsky ends the war as a gunner on the outskirts of Berlin. On return to Leningrad, he hunts for Mila and eventually finds her. Then they are caught up in a purge and sent to different Siberian work camps. But they make a pact before being separated - a pact that Volsky honors still. Volsky's story is moving. It moves Shutov. At the end of Part V, the title becomes clear. The last three parts are wonderfully written - sparse and gut wrenching.
January 10, 2021
‘Not everyone had my luck, you know.’ ‘Not everyone, no, those who died of hunger during the blockade, those who were killed in battle, those who froze to death in the ice of the camps.’ This is how Volksy has seen life. The most precious thing. Breathing. I kept wondering ‘is this really so?’ suffering from a blockade in the 2nd World War while your loved one kept dying one by one. Sent to fight the Germans, sent to exile, put in inhumane conditions and eventually end up in a room of a house whose inhabitants keeps thinking you are mute and dumb because you refuse to speak anymore? ‘Is this it?’ No matter what kind of shit life you had, is it still considered to be lucky to be alive? I don’t think so. Andrei Makine has a powerful way of altering the inner feelings of the readers. In this novel, he will walk you through past, present and the possible future of Russia from the eyes of two man, Shutov and Volksy. Living half of your life in a communist regime and the other in a completely opposite one. I guess this is one of the best books, which manages to reflect the reaction of older generation to all these changes. Living in one of the post-communist countries, I can confirm the reality of this suffering. A generation of lost people who still consider themselves lucky only because they made it through by staying alive, but are they really alive now? When do you truly die? The moment you stop breathing? I don’t think so. Once you were someone and then one day you stop being someone. You become nobody in your own eyes. In many phrases and sentences I have found myself speaking with the author of the book. His melancholic mind state matches with mine. His inner insecurities come to life through Shutov, and makes so much sense because this, I believe, is a novel about me. About the way I see life. Managing to create mindful wonders in such a short novel made me admire Andrei Makine. Especially finding myself speaking the same language with the writer made me feel good about myself. In this novel, I have understood one more time how and why smart people are unhappy and full of questions and doubts. Unfortunately The Life of an Unknown Man will not give you answers, on the contrary, it will pull you into more darkness, but still, by all means, I am very glad to have met with this brilliant writer.
January 31, 2015
Tourists visiting St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2003 – the year of the city’s tricentennial – would have faced an abundance of beauty: the pastel-colored baroque buildings of Rastrelli, plazas and canals, lovely vistas of the Neva River, palaces and churches and museum, narrow streets once walked by Gogol and Dostoevsky, the Summer Garden where young lovers stroll, and the Bronze Horseman statue of city founder Peter the Great, immortalized in verse by Pushkin.
They could be forgiven for not being able to tell – or never knowing – that only 60 years earlier, the city, then called Leningrad, was besieged by the Nazis during World War II. The residents refused to surrender, and during the 900-day siege more than 600,000 people died, most starving to death as the city’s food stores dwindled and the frigid winters set in.
The contrast between these two cities – geographically the same, but worlds apart – is at the heart of the lovely, bittersweet novel “The Life of an Unknown Man.”
The story begins not in Russia but in Paris, where Ivan Shutov, a Russian emigre and literary writer (as is Makine himself), has just been dumped by his much-younger girlfriend. Readers may roll their eyes initially at the cliche, but Makine beats us to it: “He is the absolute prototype of a man ditched by a woman young enough to be his daughter. The plot for a lightweight novel in the French manner, a hundred pages of Parisian bed-hopping and gloom.”
But the novel doesn’t go that way at all. Shutov feels sorry for himself for a bit, but – inspired by a Chekhov story (“A Little Joke,” the title of which in Russian bears the same root as Shutov’s name) – he decides to track down a girl he was once close to in Leningrad three decades before. After a chain of phone calls, Shutov has Yana’s cellphone number. With visions of long-ago romance, he calls her to tell her he’ll be in St. Petersburg the next day.
But the novel doesn’t go that way either. As it happens, his arrival is smack in the middle of the chaos of the city’s 300th anniversary festivities. Yana has become a wealthy businesswoman, horribly busy and always racing somewhere with a phone on her ear. They barely have time to talk, and Shutov wanders the crowded city alone. It’s not the city he left: there are luxury hotels, Western goods and a culture he can no longer call his own. Earlier Shutov had remarked, “I’m not Russian ... I’m Soviet.” And there is a difference, a difference he feels pointedly.
Back in Yana’s under-construction apartment, which is being created from several smaller apartments, whose tenants have all been bought out or swapped or double-swapped with to clear them out, one last tenant, Volsky, awaits the people who are coming to take him away to a rest home. Shutov has been told that the old man is deaf and mute, but as they sit in front of a TV, Volsky begins talking.
This is the way the novel goes: adrift in what was but no longer is his native land, Shutov listens to Volsky’s story of the siege of Leningrad, the war, the aftermath, the gulag, the remainder of a life.
Despite the horrors of the siege, horrors that are vividly described but not dwelled upon by the author, there were stories of bravery, determination and humanity. A young singer when the siege starts, Volsky has his life – like everyone else’s – upended. Amid the death, he and his girlfriend Mila join a theater troupe that performs opera by candlelight in a freezing theater. “Applause was no longer heard. Too weak, their hands frozen in mittens, people would bow to thank the actors. This silent gratitude was more touching than any number of ovations.”
Volsky and Mila part when he heads off to combat, but reunite after the war to begin to build a life and family together, taking war orphans into their home. This, too, is upended by the madness of Stalinism, but Volsky, instead of emerging from the camp ruined and bitter, rebuilds his life a second time.
Shutov’s own worries seem petty in comparison, and hearing the unknown story of this unknown man – “A heroic life, a life sacrificed” – transforms him.
So much is packed into this short novel, but it feels expansive, never cramped or rushed. In spare prose, Makine uses well-chosen details and searing emotions to create an enveloping story. This unknown man is worth knowing; his life is both heartbreaking and inspiring.
They could be forgiven for not being able to tell – or never knowing – that only 60 years earlier, the city, then called Leningrad, was besieged by the Nazis during World War II. The residents refused to surrender, and during the 900-day siege more than 600,000 people died, most starving to death as the city’s food stores dwindled and the frigid winters set in.
The contrast between these two cities – geographically the same, but worlds apart – is at the heart of the lovely, bittersweet novel “The Life of an Unknown Man.”
The story begins not in Russia but in Paris, where Ivan Shutov, a Russian emigre and literary writer (as is Makine himself), has just been dumped by his much-younger girlfriend. Readers may roll their eyes initially at the cliche, but Makine beats us to it: “He is the absolute prototype of a man ditched by a woman young enough to be his daughter. The plot for a lightweight novel in the French manner, a hundred pages of Parisian bed-hopping and gloom.”
But the novel doesn’t go that way at all. Shutov feels sorry for himself for a bit, but – inspired by a Chekhov story (“A Little Joke,” the title of which in Russian bears the same root as Shutov’s name) – he decides to track down a girl he was once close to in Leningrad three decades before. After a chain of phone calls, Shutov has Yana’s cellphone number. With visions of long-ago romance, he calls her to tell her he’ll be in St. Petersburg the next day.
But the novel doesn’t go that way either. As it happens, his arrival is smack in the middle of the chaos of the city’s 300th anniversary festivities. Yana has become a wealthy businesswoman, horribly busy and always racing somewhere with a phone on her ear. They barely have time to talk, and Shutov wanders the crowded city alone. It’s not the city he left: there are luxury hotels, Western goods and a culture he can no longer call his own. Earlier Shutov had remarked, “I’m not Russian ... I’m Soviet.” And there is a difference, a difference he feels pointedly.
Back in Yana’s under-construction apartment, which is being created from several smaller apartments, whose tenants have all been bought out or swapped or double-swapped with to clear them out, one last tenant, Volsky, awaits the people who are coming to take him away to a rest home. Shutov has been told that the old man is deaf and mute, but as they sit in front of a TV, Volsky begins talking.
This is the way the novel goes: adrift in what was but no longer is his native land, Shutov listens to Volsky’s story of the siege of Leningrad, the war, the aftermath, the gulag, the remainder of a life.
Despite the horrors of the siege, horrors that are vividly described but not dwelled upon by the author, there were stories of bravery, determination and humanity. A young singer when the siege starts, Volsky has his life – like everyone else’s – upended. Amid the death, he and his girlfriend Mila join a theater troupe that performs opera by candlelight in a freezing theater. “Applause was no longer heard. Too weak, their hands frozen in mittens, people would bow to thank the actors. This silent gratitude was more touching than any number of ovations.”
Volsky and Mila part when he heads off to combat, but reunite after the war to begin to build a life and family together, taking war orphans into their home. This, too, is upended by the madness of Stalinism, but Volsky, instead of emerging from the camp ruined and bitter, rebuilds his life a second time.
Shutov’s own worries seem petty in comparison, and hearing the unknown story of this unknown man – “A heroic life, a life sacrificed” – transforms him.
So much is packed into this short novel, but it feels expansive, never cramped or rushed. In spare prose, Makine uses well-chosen details and searing emotions to create an enveloping story. This unknown man is worth knowing; his life is both heartbreaking and inspiring.
June 18, 2023
Viața unui bărbat necunoscut de Andrei Makine ( 2009)
După recenta-mi experiență literară cu Pulitzer-ul, am dat fuga la raftul cu Makine, să mă dreg un pic. Cartea de la Polirom Top 10+ are o copertă banală. Titlul nu este nici el cel mai atrăgător din lume. Mă gândeam că dacă aș vedea cartea într-o librărie, fără să știu nimic despre scriitor, probabil că nu ar avea câștig de cauză în fața altor volume mai colorate și mai marketate.
Dar am avut încredere că va fi o lectură răscolitoare și chiar așa a și fost.
Am recunoscut amprenta “ celui mai rus dintre scriitorii francezi”, marile lui teme: dragostea, moartea, războiul, Rusia stalinistă, Rusia modernă, timpul, memoria, umanitatea versus dezumanizarea. Marea dragoste suspendată în afara timpului, în ciuda timpurilor.
Iubirea dintre o femeie și un bărbat “ necunoscuți” istoriei se mișcă pe verticală, în timp ce pe orizontală istoria înregistrează numele celor care se înghesuie să iasă în față. Cum ar fi cel al lui Malenkov, care-și arestează concetățenii pe motiv că “ Au făurit mitul unui Leningrad care lupta de unul singur, fără îndrumarea Partidului! Au neglijat rolul esențial al marelui Stalin, tatăl victoriei noastre!”
Ca o coincidență semnificativă, lectura aceasta s-a suprapus cu faptul că am descoperit colecția de desene alb-negru ale lui Si Lewen, intitulată “ The Parade”. Artistul american de origine poloneză a participat la al Doilea Război Mondial, eliberând prizonierii de la Buchenwald. Ca să se exorcizeze de ororile văzute pe front, el desenează în 1951 o serie de 63 de cadre care prezintă povestea eternă și repetitivă a războiului. Nu știu dacă vreunul dintre aceste desene ar fi reprezentat o copertă mai aliniată cu povestea lui Makine, însă pentru mine cei doi artiști pare că au lucrat în sincronicitate.
https://www.menil.org/exhibitions/366...
După recenta-mi experiență literară cu Pulitzer-ul, am dat fuga la raftul cu Makine, să mă dreg un pic. Cartea de la Polirom Top 10+ are o copertă banală. Titlul nu este nici el cel mai atrăgător din lume. Mă gândeam că dacă aș vedea cartea într-o librărie, fără să știu nimic despre scriitor, probabil că nu ar avea câștig de cauză în fața altor volume mai colorate și mai marketate.
Dar am avut încredere că va fi o lectură răscolitoare și chiar așa a și fost.
Am recunoscut amprenta “ celui mai rus dintre scriitorii francezi”, marile lui teme: dragostea, moartea, războiul, Rusia stalinistă, Rusia modernă, timpul, memoria, umanitatea versus dezumanizarea. Marea dragoste suspendată în afara timpului, în ciuda timpurilor.
Iubirea dintre o femeie și un bărbat “ necunoscuți” istoriei se mișcă pe verticală, în timp ce pe orizontală istoria înregistrează numele celor care se înghesuie să iasă în față. Cum ar fi cel al lui Malenkov, care-și arestează concetățenii pe motiv că “ Au făurit mitul unui Leningrad care lupta de unul singur, fără îndrumarea Partidului! Au neglijat rolul esențial al marelui Stalin, tatăl victoriei noastre!”
Ca o coincidență semnificativă, lectura aceasta s-a suprapus cu faptul că am descoperit colecția de desene alb-negru ale lui Si Lewen, intitulată “ The Parade”. Artistul american de origine poloneză a participat la al Doilea Război Mondial, eliberând prizonierii de la Buchenwald. Ca să se exorcizeze de ororile văzute pe front, el desenează în 1951 o serie de 63 de cadre care prezintă povestea eternă și repetitivă a războiului. Nu știu dacă vreunul dintre aceste desene ar fi reprezentat o copertă mai aliniată cu povestea lui Makine, însă pentru mine cei doi artiști pare că au lucrat în sincronicitate.
https://www.menil.org/exhibitions/366...
February 15, 2013
Makine is one of the best writers in the French language. This novel is uneven, and is not his best – but it does contain some amazingly beautiful passages, and there are haunting chapters that do capture the immensity of what has been the Russian tragedy during the XXth century. There are two stories, in this book. The first concerns a Russian émigré in Paris, who sees himself as a failure, and decides, on a whim, to go back to Russia for a little bit: he hopes to reconnect with a past love. This story is mostly a pretext for Makine to describe with ferocity post-soviet Russia, a country that has succumbed to all the demons of capitalism. It doesn’t entirely convince, maybe because the charge comes across a little bit too much as a caricature, and is not that original – although Makine has an eye for the details that reveal where the country is going. The second (and better) story is told to the “hero” by an old Russian, who has lived an extraordinary, and extraordinarily sad, life. World War II and the Soviet regime play a major –and of course tragic – role in this man’s life. It is in those chapters that Makine is at the top of his form– and where the novel becomes truly heartbreaking.
July 3, 2015
just read this book for a second time, and i enjoyed it even more. in fact, this book just moved up in the ranks to my top five of all time. it's a perfect little novel, especially for writers and anyone seeking profound prose, the kind that lives on for decades, long after the author is gone. what's your definition of happiness? and love? and meaning? this novel will help you answer those questions. highest of recommends
January 18, 2015
Get through the first third of the book and it opens out to be something far more important and far better written than it had seemed. Changes in the country, the people, the culture are part of it but it all ties together beautifully at the end. Must read more of him.
October 22, 2011
Wonderful book and extremely moving. it's a book of two halves and the first is harder work than the second, which is gripping and beautifully written.
August 18, 2014
Un roman in care se marturiseste de ce tranzitia in vremurile actuale dupa contextul comunist este imposibil de indurat de catre memoriile unor figuri care indeamna la alienare si resemnare.
August 12, 2024
Te ține într-un permanent contrast între viața crudă din timpul războiului si frumusețea vieții simple, ușoare sub puterea unei iubirii.
O întoarcere la ceea ce contează … de a fi fericit când nu ai nimic.
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