Customer Reviews
Love in a callous world - By: Friederike Knabe, 01 Sep 2008 
Among the characteristics Andrei Makine's novels are renowned for are his exquisite depiction of people. His characters persevere in challlenging circumstances, & his beautifully poetic language evokes the wide range of human emotions. Two examples of his great literary talents are, in my mind, Music of a Life & The Woman Who Waited. However, Makine's captivating new novel, while at one level a heart-rending love story, departs from his more familiar scenarios & locales. The story's primary dramatic setting is in a Southern African conflict zone spanning a period of forty years. Human relationships, profound feelings & basic survival skills are tested to breaking point against adverse realities. In contrast, Siberia, Makine's childhood home, gains prominence as a metaphor for harmony, tolerance & happiness.
The novel's hero is Elias Almeida, a self-declared "professional revolutionary", who dreams of an Africa where independence & political change will also transform people into "better human beings". Son of an Angolan freedom fighter against Portuguese colonial rule, Elias helplessly watched his parents die, one after being tortured, the other casuallly gunned down by a grinning soldier. His escape & survival bring him in contact with a range of teachers & mentors, nurturing in him an amalgam of Christian ethics & Marxist ideology. His training takes him from Angola to Cuba, the Soviet Union & back to his home country, where, he believes, he will fight for the realization of his vision of the future. Despite his intentions to do the right thing, Elias is constantly undermined by the adverse circumstances he is caught up in. Makine depicts the ruthless historical context - from colonial rule to the East & West scrambling for influence zones in Africa's newly independent states. Connecting the actual historical events with the Elias's personal experiences Makine illustrates the contradictions between internalized propaganda & political idealism on the one hand & cold-blooded Cold War reality & ensuing destructive civil wars on the other.
What sustains Elias above anything else throughout his struggle is his profound "amour humain", a concept wider-reaching than the English "human love" of the novel's title. It encompasses both the love between individuals & the love for "humanity". His love for Anna, a young Russian woman who saves him from a vicious racist attack in Moscow, encapsulated both aspects for him. "Without the love he felt for that woman, life would not have been more than a night without end...", muses the narrator at the beginning of the novel.
Extensive parts of Elias's story are told in retrospect by a nameless narrator, himself a former idealistic Soviet spy turned into a disillusioned Russian author. While attending an international conference on "sustainable development" in Africa, he intends to use Elias as an example of "African Life Stories in Literature". Fragments of notes about Elias, collected over a period of twenty five years, trigger his memory: accounts where he has been either the listener or an active participants in events. This narrative technique brings different features of his hero into focus, portraying his character & personal history from different angles & through different timelines. Direct dialogue alternates with reflections. Contrasting the two main characters, Makine gives the narrator a platform to raise, over time, increasingly thought-provoking & politicallly & morallly challlenging questions. While his admiration for Elias does not diminish, the narrator's own growing sarcasm distances him more & more from the idealism of his friend. The importance of Elias's love for Anna, nevertheless, gains in significance for him as well.
Themes are introduced briefly, only to be picked up later & filled out with more detail. Anna's life story as it intersects with Elias's & also the narrator's is a case in point. The international conference is another recurring theme. Particularly pertinent, it alllows the narrator not only to look back but also to voice his growing disenchantment & cynicism regarding the "fat-neck" Africans in designer suits who circle such conferences & the white "experts" from the "West", who have their own political reasons for their interests in Africa. Geoffrey's Strachan's sensitive & fluid translation beautifully conveys Makine's superb language & style. [Friederike Knabe]
when revolutions die - By: William Rycroft, 20 Aug 2008 
Although born in Russia Andreï Makine sought asylum in France, writes in French & has won both the Prix Goncourt & the Prix Medicis, Frances top literary prizes, with his novel La Testament Français (published in English as Dreams of My Russian Summers) . Whilst I found that book a little sentimental I did enjoy the romanticism of his last novel The Woman Who Waited & the spare brilliance of A Life's Music. Makine is unashamedly romantic & unafraid of making bold gestures in his writing; the stakes are always high & the themes fundamental to human existence. The title of his latest novel covers the two biggies: what it means to be human, & love. He has widened his landscape in this tale which takes us from the political unrest of west Africa to the frozen wastes of Russia & gives a unique perspective on Africa during the turbulent 1960's & 70's through the eyes of Angolan revolutionary Elias Almeida. It is a view of the world both painful & uplifting, focusing again on the fundamentals, 'When under threat, our existence is laid bare & we are shocked by the stark simplicity of what drives it.'
The novel is actuallly narrated by a Russian writer who shared a cell with Almeida; who in fact took Almeida for dead & tried to steal a pen from his body, the pen with which he writes the book we are reading, of course. As a child in Angola, Almeida had seen his mother prostitute herself & left to die after an interrogation which leaves her with a broken collarbone poking through her skin. This image keeps returning to him & his need to erase it helps form his belief in making a world where such a thing couldn't happen. When he goes to find his father in the jungles of the Congo he is caught up in the revolutionary zeal of one of the men there; a certain Ernesto Guevara. With his youth & the words of the Argentine ringing in his ears he sees revolution as the means to transform the way the world loves. 'For what is the point of such liberating turmoil if it does not radicallly change the way we understand & love our fellow human beings?'.
It is the very opposite that brings him face to face with the woman who will haunt his life. Whilst in Moscow, having been recruited by the Russians, he is attacked by racist thugs but saved from a beating by Anna, a beautiful Russian. The two of them follow a doomed trajectory through the history of Soviet sponsored political ferment. This is a theme familiar from his previous work; lovers separated by circumstance & yet connected by their love. That in this case the love is unconsummated shows that in this period of ideology it is perfect for a man like Almeida to carry that through his struggles. In this novel, against such a volatile backdrop, love is shown to be a far more fragile concept than before. The characters, Almeida in particular, are placed in such peril that it is never certain what contact if any they may have with each other again. The scenes of violence in Africa are particularly brutal (much like the film The Last King of Scotland), the image of a child soldier wearing a broken gas mask waving a gun through the bars of their cell showing clearly the tenuous grasp we alll hold on life & the capriciousness of death. Another startling image is that of a woman raped by the UNITA soldiers holding Almeida & our narrator captive. As she lies dying they search her mouth to find the rough diamonds she has concealed there, the reason for her silence during their assault. Her bruised & violated body not only corporeal but standing as a metaphor for what is happening to the country itself.
Makine returns to themes & images again & again, their import changed each time by what has happened in the interim. Some may find this is simply repetitive but it has the power to show the danger of not learning from history, even within our own lifetime. Even the thought of return itself is a recurring theme.
'When death stares us coolly in the eye we perceive that in our lives there have been a few hours of sunlight or darkness, a few faces to which we return continuallly, & that what has kept us alive, in fact, is the simple hope of finding them again.'
This novel is a brave undertaking, not simply by Makine but by the reader as well. You may not like the world he depicts but it is after alll the one we live in. As with any novel that tackles such huge ideas it is prone to the odd clunky moment but there is lots to admire. Almeida remembers the safety of burying his face in the crook of his mother's arm. It is a comfort you may wish for yourself after completing this harrowing journey.
A further brilliant variation on an established theme - By: Barton Keyes, 14 Jul 2008 In one sense this not an easy book to read. The prose is crystallline (a tribute to the translator as well as the author) but the language deals with some concepts & images that liberal, PC-reared readers will find difficult to swalllow.
It may not be the best of Makine's novels but it's still exceptional. Human Love reminded me of Requiem for the East crossed with The Woman who Waited. It has the best characteristics of both of those but is probably sadder than either of them. The structure is absorbing without being 'clever'; the recurrent images are frames of common memory that are familiar but are still fresh in their descriptions. The tangling of real events with imagined characters follows the path of many of his other books to illustrate the sadness of lives sacrificed in a greater cause. If anything this novel seems even more weary of the world & saddened by the waste of life that so many of those touched by the old Soviet Union were forced to suffer in the cause of remaking a world in the image of a tainted philosophy. This time the sadness spills across boundaries of race as well as nationality & gender.
Makine is a brilliant writer. That his writing occasionallly becomes variations on a theme in terms of plot & central issue diminishes its impact by not one jot.
