Synopses & Reviews
"Less than 150 pages long, but it has the panoramic sweep of the great Russian novels of the Nineteenth century." (Sunday Telegraph, London)
With the exquisitely wrought and deeply felt prose that has won him an international following, critically acclaimed author Andreï Makine's Confessions of a Fallen Standard-Bearer is the story of Arkady and Alyosha, two Young Soviet Pioneers who once marched to the clarion call of socialist ideals. Years after the two grow to adulthood and emigrate to the West, Aloysha-now a writer living in Paris-hears a chance rumor of Arkady and a flood of memory is unleashed. Makine follows the trajectory of the boys' initial ideological fervor to their gradual disillusionment with the Party's hypocrisies and hollow promises.
About the Author
Andreï Makine was born in 1958 and left the former Soviet Union to emigrate to France ten years ago. Dreams of My Russian Summers won both the Goncourt and Medicis prizes, France's two top literary awards, and was a finalist for the 1997 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.