The Life of an Unknown Man

Andrei Makine's eleventh novel is a delicate portrait of a man's failed love affair, in more ways than one. Shutov is a Russian-born writer who has spent twenty years in exile in Paris. Having failed to publish his manuscript, the lustre of his artistic talents soon begins to wane and his twenty-something girlfriend Léa loses interest. Suddenly his love affair, both with writing and with Léa, comes to an abrupt end and he decides to return to St. Petersburg in the hope of finding his former sweetheart Yana.

However, the Yana and the new Russia that greets him shatter his nostalgia and any illusions of things going back to the way they were. Yet his reunion with Yana also brings him into contact with Volsky, a tenant in Jana's communal flat. This 'unknown man' not only survived the Siege of Leningrad but also maintained a long-distance love affair with his beloved Mila.

Despite his disillusionment with present-day Russia and everything that it represents, Shutov draws much inspiration from Volsky's tale. He no longer wallows in self-pity, lamenting his status as a 'joker' or 'clown', as his name suggests in Russian, but comes to a peaceful acceptance of his position in society.

Since Makine, like his protagonist, was born in Russia and has resided in Paris for over twenty years, it is easy to draw parallels with Makine's own life, although Shutov's lack of success makes it more of a distorted mirror image. At times, Makine's authorial voice weighs a little too heavily on Shutov's narrative, but Geoffrey Strachan's eloquent translation maintains the narrative's steady flow.

A musing on the nature of nostalgia, memory and love, perhaps Makine's novel is not only about a love affair with writing and women, but of his own ongoing love affair with Russia itself.

Andrei Makine was born in Siberia in 1957 and has lived in Paris since seeking asylum in 1987. Nowadays he writes in French and his fourth novel, Le Testament Français, was awarded both the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Médicis in 1995.