An early (1992) novel by the Russian-born author whose Dreams of My Russian Summers (1997) and other fiction (all written in French) offer meditative ruminations on and muted celebrations of boyhood, romantic imagination, and first love. This story, narrated by an émigré writer cut off from his Siberian roots, and addressed to his own boyhood friend, recalls “the dazzling infatuation of our childhood” as Communist “Young Pioneers,” and as the sons of WWII veteran comrades (who “were like a single man”). Wry observations on the emptiness and hypocrisy of Party rhetoric aren’t really Makine’s forte, but the many wistful images here—which climax unforgettably with the vision of an amputee being carried through wheat fields he “scythes”—help make this brief fiction another of the prose lyrical ballads at which this gifted and unusual writer almost uniquely excels.
