An astounding novel that penetrates the 20th-century experience, from one of Europe`s most feted authors.

In Soviet Russia the desire for freedom is also a desire for the freedom to love. Lovers live as outlaws, traitors to the collective spirit, and love is more intense when it feels like an act of resistance. Now entering middle age, an orphan recalls the fleeting moments that have never left him — a scorching day in a blossoming orchard with a woman who loves another; a furtive, desperate affair in a Black Sea resort; the bunch of snowdrops a crippled childhood friend gave him to give to his lover. As the dreary Brezhnev era gives way to Perestroika and the fall of Communism, the orphan uncovers the truth behind the life of Dmitri Ress, whose tragic fate embodies the unbreakable bond between love and freedom.

In Soviet Russia the desire for freedom is also a desire for the freedom to love. Lovers live as outlaws, traitors to the collective spirit, and love is more intense when it feels like an act of resistance. Now entering middle age, an orphan recalls the fleeting moments that have never left him — a scorching day in a blossoming orchard with a woman who loves another; a furtive, desperate affair in a Black Sea resort; the bunch of snowdrops a crippled childhood friend gave him to give to his lover. As the dreary Brezhnev era gives way to Perestroika and the fall of Communism, the orphan uncovers the truth behind the life of Dmitri Ress, whose tragic fate embodies the unbreakable bond between love and freedom.

«Défendre cette femme... Effacer les clichés qui la défigurent. Briser le masque que le mépris a scellé sur son visage. Aimer cette femme dont tant d'hommes n'ont su que convoiter le corps et envier le pouvoir. C'est cette passion qui anime le cinéaste russe Oleg Erdmann, désireux de sonder le mystère de la Grande Catherine. Qui était-elle? Une cruelle Messaline russo-allemande aux penchants nymphomanes? Une tsarine clamant son «âme républicaine»? La séductrice des philosophes, familière de Voltaire et Diderot, Cagliostro et Casanova? Derrière ce portrait, Erdmann découvre le drame intime de Catherine — depuis son premier amour brisé par les intérêts dynastiques jusqu'au voyage secret qui devait la mener au-delà de la comédie atroce de l'Histoire. L'art de ce grand roman transcende la biographie. L'effervescence du XVIIIe siècle européen se trouve confrontée à la violente vitalité de la Russie moderne. La quête d'Erdmann révèle ainsi la véritable liberté d'être et d'aimer.»

Elias Almeida, professional revolutionary, has seen mankind at its pitiless worst. Witness as a child to the death of both his parents in uprisings in Angola and the Congo, and later as a Soviet agent at the heart of African politics, he has observed murder, rape, pillage and starvation in the name of ideology, and suffered imprisonment and torture. Yet he continues to believe in a better world and the redeeming power of love — the love of humanity, and the love between individuals. And in his own case, the love of one woman, a Russian who rescued him from thugs one snowy night on the streets of Moscow... Spanning forty years of Africa's tormented past as a battleground between East and West and ranging from Cuba to Siberia, this powerful, impassioned novel questions the cost of idealism as it tells the haunting story of a remarkable bond.

The compelling, brilliant new novel from a master of European literature, a bestseller in France.

«Dreams of My Russian Summers» tells the poignant story of a boy growing up amid the harsh realities of Soviet life in the 1960s and 1970s, and of his extraordinary love for an elegant Frenchwoman, Charlotte Lemonnier, who is his grandmother. During the warm summer evenings spent on her front porch, she recounts to him tales from another time and place--Paris at the turn of the century.»

A boy grows up bewitched by his French grandmother's memories of Paris before the Great War. Yet, despite what he also learns of her suffering in the Soviet Union under Stalin, as an adolescent, he finds himself proud to be a Russian. Torn between the two cultures, he eventually makes a choice which has a wholly unexpected outcome. Locked behind the Iron Curtain, a young boy grows up bewitched by his French grandmother's memories of Paris before the Great War. Yet despite what he also learns of her suffering in the Soviet Union under Stalin and during the Second World War, as an adolescent he finds himself proud to be a Russian. Torn between the two cultures, he eventually makes a choice — which has a wholly unexpected outcome. Capturing the powerful allure of illusion, this unforgettable novel traces a sentimental and intellectual journey that embraces the dramatic history of the twentieth century.

A novel spanning the history of Russia through the tumultuous 20th century, from the only writer ever to have won both the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Medicis.

A story of courage and survival in the face of great adversity.

Olga Arbyelina, a White Russian princess living quietly with her adolescent son in a small French town, is a relative newcomer to the Russian community there. Intriguingly little is known about her when, in the summer of 1947, she is suspected of murdering a fellow emigre, only for the case to be dropped. As the story of the preceding year unfolds, a picture forms of her upbringing in Russia followed by her exile and marriage in France, and the details of a darker, hidden crime begin to emerge, encircling the narrative in an ever-tightening snare.

«Tout devait être exactement ainsi, elle le comprenait à présent: cette femme, cet adolescent, leur indicible intimité dans cette maison suspendue au bord d'une nuit d'hiver, au bord d'un vide, étrangère à ce globe grouillant de vies humaines, hâtives et cruelles. Elle l'éprouva comme une vérité suprême. Une vérité qui se disait avec cette transparence bleutée sur le perron, le frémissement d'une constellation juste au-dessus du mur de la Horde, avec sa solitude face à ce ciel. Personne dans ce monde, dans cet univers ne savait qu'elle se tenait là, le corps limpide de froid, les yeux largement ouverts... Elle comprenait que, dite avec les mots, cette vérité signifiait folie. Mais les mots à cet instant-là se transformaient en une buée blanche et ne disaient que leur bref scintillement dans la lumière stellaire...»