The Woman Who Waited

The Woman Who Waited

by Andrei Makine (Author), Geoffrey Strachan (Translator), Andrei Makine (Author), Geoffrey Strachan (Translator), Andreï Makine (Author), Andreï Makine (Author)

Synopsis

When a young, rebellious writer from Leningrad arrives in a remote Russian village to study local customs, one woman stands out: Vera, who has been waiting thirty years for her lover to return from the Second World War. As fascinated as he is appalled by the fruitless fidelity of this still beautiful woman, he sets out to win her affections. But the better he thinks understands her the more she surprises him, and the more he gains uncomfortable insights into himself. Lyrically evoking the haunting beauty of the Archangel region, Makine tells a timeless story of the human heart and its capacity for enduring love, selfish passion and cowardly betrayal.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 192
Edition: New e.
Publisher: Sceptre
Published: 22 Feb 2007

ISBN 10: 0340837373
ISBN 13: 9780340837375
Book Overview: The compelling, brilliant new novel from a master of European literature, a bestseller in France
Prizes: Shortlisted for International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2008.

Media Reviews
'Ravishing' * The Times *
'Achingly beautiful' * Guardian *
'Bewitchingly mysterious...Makine's reputation rises with every book, and some have claimed that he deserves the Nobel Prize; on the strength of this teasing, emotionally dense novel, it's easy to see why' * Sunday Telegraph *
'Luminous, enthralling...The enormity of the Second World War, with more than 20 million Russian dead, is allied with one, inconsolable human tragedy. This is where Makine dazzles. He can make the universal deeply intimate.' * Herald *
'Beautiful...Makine gives us a work about love and its doppelganger, infatuation, which is by turns touching and profoundly sad' * Spectator *
Author Bio
Andrei Makine was born in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia in 1957, but sought asylum in France in 1987. While initially sleeping rough in Paris he was writing his first novel, A HERO'S DAUGHTER, which was eventually published in 1990 after Makine pretended it had been translated from the Russian, since no publisher believed he could have written it in French. With his third novel, ONCE UPON A RIVER LOVE, he was finally published as a 'French' writer, and with his fourth, LE TESTAMENT FRANCAIS, he became the first author to win both of France's top literary prizes, the Prix Goncourt and Prix Medicis. Since then Andrei Makine has written THE CRIME OF OLGA ARBYELINA, REQUIEM FOR THE EAST, A LIFE'S MUSIC, which won the Grand Prix RTL-Lire, and THE EARTH AND SKY OF JACQUES DORME.