Deze epische trilogie duikt in de diepten van het menselijk geheugen en de identiteit, waarbij nostalgische herinneringen worden verweven met de harde realiteiten van het leven. Volg de reis van de protagonist door complexe relaties en levensveranderende gebeurtenissen die hun lot vormgeven tegen onvergetelijke achtergronden. Het verhaal is rijk aan poëtische schoonheid en diepe filosofische reflecties over liefde, verlies en de zin van het bestaan. Het is een ontroerende verkenning van het zoeken naar iemands wortels en het streven naar begrip.
Een grootmoeder vertelt haar kleinzoon tijdens de Russische winters prachtige verhalen over Frankrijk. Eenmaal volwassen emigreert hij naar het land van zijn dromen. Daar begint hij te schrijven over herinneringen en de werkelijkheid.
Amid the ashes of the Soviet Union a Russian army doctor turned spy addresses the woman he loves - a fellow spy who has shared his shadowy life in Africa, Europe and the Middle East, but who has disappeared. The tale he unfolds spans three generations of his family, ordinary people caught up in the convulsions of the Russian empire in the twentieth century, from the civil war through the Second World War to beyond the fall of communism. It is a tale of brutality and soured dreams yet also one of altruism, tenacity and immense courage, written by a master.
The touching finale to the epic trilogy that began with Dreams of My Russian Summers , by the man whose work has been compared to that of Chekhov and Proust. A love story. A brief encounter, set in the gutted, burning Stalingrad of May 1942. Earlier, Jacques Dorme, a French fighter pilot, had been shot down in a dogfight against the German invaders of France in June 1940. Made prisoner and sent east to a POW camp, Dorme escapes and makes his way to a devastated Russia where, ultimately, he joins a Russian squadron. At Stalingrad, Dorme meets and falls madly in love with a nurse. Amid the ruins, their love blossoms but is cut short by Dorme's sudden departure for Siberia, where he ferries American planes brought in from Alaska for the Soviet air force. Crossing the polar sky on New Year's Eve 1944, in a heroic move to save his fellow pilots, Dorme crashes into an ice-covered peak. Decades later, the narrator, a Russian war orphan exiled in France, haunted by his harrowing childhood and obsessively searching for his roots, travels back to his native land, where he discovers his life and that of Jacques Dorme are inextricably intertwined.