Requiem for a Lost Empire

First edition in English. Large 8vo. 252pp. Quarter-bound black cloth over red paper-covered boards, lettered in gilt to spine; red endpapers.

Translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan. Originally published in 2000 by Mercure de France as Requiem pour l'Est.

Author's sixth novel. A multi-generational saga spanning eight decades – from the October Revolution of 1917 to the Cold War era and onwards to the fall of Communism – narrated by a nameless, Russian army doctor. 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] worthy lyrical addition to Makine's Proustian tapestry depicting a vanished country's deeply conflicted past and present." –Kirkus Reviews