This is the concluding novel in a trilogy of Russian 20th- century life, written by a Russian in French of astonishing beauty and now splendidly rendered into English by that prince of translators, Geoffrey Strachan. Makine is for me indisputably a novelist of genius, such as, sadly, we ourselves no longer possess.

The preceding volume, Requiem for the East, contains one bewildering oddity. Of the pasts of two vital characters, a saintly Frenchwoman and a serpentine Russian spy, we learn virtually nothing. The woman, exiled in Russia, has courageously acted as a friend to the narrator’s parents. Then, when they have been exterminated, she acts as, in effect, his foster-mother. In the present volume, the spy makes no appearance; but much of the book is taken up with her tragic and yet inspiring story.

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