Once Upon the River Love

Andreď Makine

Arcade Pub., 1998 - Fiction - 209 pages

But for three young men - the handsome young Alyosha, the crippled Utkin, and the older, dashing Samurai - little is needed to construct their own special universe. Despite the harshness of the environment and their meager resources, the three adolescents form a tight band of friendship and dream of another life, a world of passion and love. The warm lights of the Transsiberian train passing through give them fleeting glimpses of that other world. And when they learn one day that a Western film is being shown at the Red October Theatre in the closest real city, Nerlug, twenty miles away on the mighty Amur River, they trek for hours on snow shoes to see it. Through that film, starring the French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo and replete with gorgeous women whom he succeeds in seducing one after the other with consummate ease, the boys' lives are changed forever. Over the next several months they travel seventeen times to see their hero.

About the author

Andrei Makine was born in Siberia in 1957. Although raised in the Soviet Union, he learned about France and came to love that country through the stories told by his French grandmother. He now lives in Paris himself, having been granted political asylum by France in 1987, and writes in French. His grandmother figures prominently in the autobiographical novel, "Dreams of My Russian Summers," for which Makine received both the Goncourt Prize and the Medicis Prize, becoming the first author to simultaneously receive both of these prestigious French awards. In the U.S., the English translation of "Dreams of My Russian Summers" has also received recognition, including the Boston Book Review Fiction Prize and the Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year award. Andrei Makine is also the author of "Once Upon the River Love" and "The Crime of Olga Arbelina."

Bibliographic information

• Title: Once Upon the River Love
• Author: Andreď Makine
• Translated by: Geoffrey Strachan
• Edition: revised
• Publisher: Arcade Pub., 1998
• ISBN: 1559704381, 9781559704380
• Length: 209 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Fiction / Places / Europe