There are two themes from which almost all human literature arises: love and war. Both meet here. A young man on the Trans-Siberian Railway, he is forcibly recruited and is already on his way to an unknown destination – no one knows exactly where the journey is going, to which base, to which war – when he is mistreated by fellow recruits. He decides to desert, an action that will mean certain death if unsuccessful. On his way through the train he meets the French woman Hélène, who is also a deserter, so to speak, because she has left her Russian lover for Paris.
Even if the two don't understand each other through language, they form an alliance. Beyond any cheesy flings, no, it's much more sophisticated. And the ending is one of the most beautiful scenes we have ever read. A novel of striking relevance: the situation of the Russian soldiers who were sent towards Ukraine without knowing where they were going, the treatment of people as material, depersonalized, tied to strategy… The French original is from 2012, which doesn't matter at all . Because in this current novel, every sentence, every narrative position and every camera movement is elegantly designed and beautifully translated. A perfect novel, slim, delicate, breathtaking.
