Search results for ""Author Geoffrey Strachan""

He was interned at Buchenwald during the German occupation and imprisoned by the Vietnamese when France's armies in the Far East collapsed. Now Capitaine Degorce is an interrogator himself, and the only peace he can find is in the presence of Tahar, a captive commander in the very organization he is charged with eliminating. But his confessor is no saint: Tahar stands accused of indiscriminate murder. Lieutenant Andreani - who served with Degorce in Vietnam and revels in his new role as executioner - is determined to see a noose around his neck. This is Algeria, 1957. Blood, sand, dust, heat - perhaps the bitterest colonial conflict of the last century. Degorce will learn that in times of war, no matter what a man has suffered in his past, there is no limit to the cruelty he is capable of.

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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.

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In this inspiring story, Andreï Makine looks back on a childhood friendship which changed his life. Set in 1970s Siberia, in the declining years of the Soviet Empire, My Armenian Friend offers a poignant evocation of ordinary lives as well as a window into Makine's own evolution as a writer.In an orphan school, a young Russian boy befriends Vardan, an Armenian child who, because mature and sensitive, is tormented by schoolyard bullies. When the Russian boy meets Vardan's Armenian family, he falls under their spell. In his eyes, their home is a kingdom transported from afar, which is adorned, aromatic, and beautiful despite how little the family possesses. Their neighbourhood is in a place of exile but is one of community, made up of former prisoners, exhausted adventurers and others who have been uprooted from their homes. As he grows closer to Vardan, the Russian boy learns to recognise a people forced indefinitely to live on the margins, but who, despite persecution, hold on to their culture and cherish the memories they have of their homeland and its history. Even in a brutally inhospitable Siberia, they recreate a transformative "kingdom of Armenia".

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Marie, a nurse on the island of Mayotte, adopts an abandoned baby and names him Moïse, raising him as a French boy. As he grows up, Moïse struggles with his status as an "outsider" and to understand why he was abandoned as a baby. When Marie dies, he is left alone, plunged into uncertainty and turmoil, ending up in the largest and most infamous slum on Mayotte, nicknamed "Gaza".Narrated by five different characters, Tropic of Violence is an exploration of lost youth on the French island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean. Shining a powerful light on problems of violence, immigration, identity, deprivation and isolation on this island that became a French département in 2011, it is a remarkable, unsettling new novel that draws on the author's own observations from her time on Mayotte.Translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan

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As a child, Elias Almeida loses both his parents during the Angolan uprising against colonial rule. As an adult and professional revolutionary, he bears witness to mankind at its pitiless worst. Yet he continues to believe in a better world and in the redeeming power of love -- even though he cannot be with the woman he loves, who rescued him from thugs one snowy night on the streets of Moscow. Spanning forty years of Africa's past as a battleground between East and West, this powerful novel explores the heights and depths of human nature as it tells a profoundly affecting story of sacrifice and idealism.

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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.

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Once upon a time there was a boy whose mother called him "Wolf"She thought this name would bring him strength, luck, natural authority, but how could she know that this boy would grow up to be the gentlest and strangest of sons and that he would end up captured like a wild animalThere he is now, in the back of a police van, as we turn the pageIt all begins with a crash.One night, seventeen-year-old Wolf steals his mother's car and drives six hundred kilometres in search of his sister, who left home ten years ago. Unlicensed and on edge, he veers onto the wrong side of the road and causes an accident. He is arrested, imprisoned, and leaves his mother and sister to pick up the pieces.What follows is an unflinching account of the events that lead to this moment, told through the alternating perspectives of Wolf's mother, sister and various other voices. In this raw and poignant novel, Nathacha Appanah reveals how trauma shapes generations and the wounds it leaves behind. The Sky Above the Roof is both a portrait of a fractured family and a poetic exploration of the ways we break apart and rebuildTranslated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan

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"A Siberian Heart of Darkness" Julian BarnesOn the far eastern borders of the Soviet Union, in the sunset of Stalin's reign, soldiers are training for a war that could end all wars, for in the atomic age man has sown the seeds of his own destruction. Among them is Pavel Gartsev, a reservist. Orphaned, scarred by the last great war and unlucky in love, he is an instant victim for the apparatchiks and ambitious careerists who thrive within the Red Army's ranks. Assigned to a search party composed of regulars and reservists, charged with the recapture of an escaped prisoner from a nearby gulag, Gartsev finds himself one of an unlikely quintet of cynics, sadists and heroes, embarked on a challenging manhunt through the Siberian taiga. But the fugitive, capable, cunning and evidently at home in the depths of these vast forests, proves no easy prey. As the pursuit goes on, and the pursuers are struck by a shattering discovery, Gartsev confronts both the worst within himself and the tantalising prospect of another, totally different life.Translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan

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'Achingly beautiful' Guardian 'By turns touching and profoundly sad' SpectatorWhen 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 he 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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In present-day France a Russian writer recalls his harsh childhood at a Stalingrad orphanage in the 1960s and the old Frenchwoman, a family friend, whose tales fed his dreams of a better world. One story in particular has stayed with him: that of her brief, passionate affair, during World War II, with the French fighter pilot Jacques Dorme, who subsequently died in a plane crash in the Siberian mountains. So the narrator decides to retrace Jacques Dorme's steps, beginning a journey which leads him not only to revisit the land of his birth but also to see his adopted homeland in an unflattering new light. A profound and moving novel about the dangers of ideology and of war, delivered with humour, sensuousness and great lyricism.

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In a snowbound railway station deep in the Soviet Union, a stranded passenger comes across an old man playing the piano in the dark, silent tears rolling down his cheeks. Once on the train to Moscow he begins to tell his story: a tale of loss, love and survival that movingly illustrates the strength of human resilience. 'A novella to be read in a lunch hour and remembered for ever' Jilly Cooper, Books of the Year, Sunday Telegraph

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Raj is oblivious to the Second World War being fought beyond his tiny exotic island. His mother is his sole company while his father works as a prison guard, so the boy thinks only of making friends. One day, from the far-away world, a ship brings to the island Jewish exiles who have been refused entry to Israel. David, a recently orphaned boy of his own age from Prague, becomes the friend that he has longed for, and Raj takes it upon himself to help David to escape from the prison. As they flee through sub-tropical forests and devastating storms, the boys battle hunger and malaria - and forge a friendship only death could destroy.

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'It is impossible to exaggerate the power of this short, unbearably poignant novel.' Mail on Sunday'A bold and elegant novel' Helen Dunmore, Guardian'A haunting story, beautifully told' Viv Groskop, ObserverAn extraordinary story of love and endurance during the Siege of Leningrad lies at the heart of a magnificent novel about Russia past and present, and the human condition.One night in St Petersburg, two men meet, both adrift in the brash new Russia: Shutov, a writer visiting after years of exile in Paris, and Volsky, an elderly survivor of the Siege of Leningrad and Stalin's purges. His life story - one of extreme suffering, courage and an extraordinary love - he considers unremarkable. To Shutov it is a revelation, the tale of an unsung hero that puts everything into perspective and suggests where true happiness lies.

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