Confessions of a Lapsed Standard-Bearer

First edition in English. 8vo., [vi], 136pp. Publisher's black cloth boards, titled in silver to spine. Illustrated dustwrapper printed in black.

Signed and dated by the Author to title page.

Translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan. Originally published by Belfond in 1992 as Confession d'un porte-drapeau déchu.

Author's second novel. A poignant evocation of a Soviet childhood in a little dormitory town near Leningrad after the war. A Russian émigré in France since 1987, Makine had to present his first manuscripts as translations from his mother tongue to overcome publishers' scepticism over his near-faultless French as a newly arrived exile. The author grew up bilingual thanks to an elderly French nanny who took care of him since the age of four. Recipient of the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Médicis for Dreams of My Russian Summers (1995), Makine was elected to the Académie française in March 2016, succeeding the late Assia Djebar.

"[A] master word-painter. [Confessions of a Lapsed Standard-Bearer]... has the panoramic sweep of the great Russian novels of the 19th century." –David Robson, Sunday Telegraph