Kolia

by Perrine Leblanc

Kolia est né dans un camp de travail de Sibérie orientale en 1937. Très jeune, il fait la connaissance de Iossif, un détenu originaire d'Europe de l'Ouest qui lui transmet les rudiments pour survivre au bagne et lui enseigne le calcul, le russe et le français, avant de disparaître comme la plupart des êtres qui ont habité cette prison à ciel ouvert. Libéré à la mort de Staline, Kolia apprend à vivre dans la société soviétique. Il devient clown blanc dans un cirque à Moscou, y trouve le réconfort d'une famille et connaît le succès jusqu'à l'implosion de l'URSS. Mais le souvenir de Iossif et du goulag le hantera toute sa vie. Kolia, c'est le roman d'un homme et de son double circassien, le clown prestidigitateur au visage blanc et aux traits redessinés pour la piste. Puis c'est le récit d'une amitié fondamentale et inachevée, fil rouge dans l'histoire de cet homme que la violence du monde n'a pas cassé.

Genres: Canada

168 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 4, 2011

About the author

Her debut novel L'homme blanc, published in 2010, won the 2010 Grand prix du livre de Montréal,[2] the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction at the 2011 Governor General's Awards,[3] and the 2011 edition of Le Combat des livres.

Leblanc studied at the Université Laval and the Université de Montréal, and worked as an editor with Éditions Leméac in Montreal before publishing L'homme blanc.[2] Following the novel's commercial and award success, a revised edition was published in France in 2011 under the title Kolia.

Her second novel, Malabourg, was published in 2014. Malabourg was translated into English with the title "The Lake".

Reviews

[Kenneth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Russia and spanning almost 60 years from 1937 to the mid-nineties, it follows Kolia, an orphan born in Russia’s Siberian camps who grows up in the harshness of the Gulag. Following the amnesty after Stalin's death, his life begins anew in Moscow, where, in a series of colorful events, fortuitous meetings, adventures and misadventures, the cruelty and continued indifference of the world is exposed.

Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for French Fiction (as "L'homme blanc").

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this novel won a lot of prizes simply because it deals with the complex legacy of the Soviet period and life in the gulag. That being said, some people might have found the spare prose to be effective, but I felt the novel really paled in comparison to other books that have treated similar subject matter. Perhaps I simply had high expectations or maybe I should have read it in French (I borrowed the book without even realizing that it was translated), but it just wasn't for me. Something about the story and the writing just didn't ring true unfortunately.

[Darren Donahue · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short, comfortable read with a nice story arch of Kolia's life. While concise, I think it leaves (and perhaps this was the intention) the reader with so many unanswered questions about his life due to the lack of detail in many of the characters, their stories, and their traits.
But this is also reality: sometimes we never get to find out what happens to people who come and go through our life.

[Leon Dunn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. It could have been much, much longer, but I liked the short, bare bones prose. Wish I could read it in French!