Brief Loves That Live Forever - Tapa blanda

"Makine's prose is both spare and meditative, and leads us deep into the memories of a world that is now gone." --The Observer on Andreï Makine

"A poignant, poetically charged picture of a repressive society, leavened only by the freedom and possibilities of love." --The Mail on Sunday on Andreï Makine

"I would rather read Andreï Makine than any other novelist of our time . . . This new short, beautiful book is as good as anything he has written . . . Reading Makine makes me happy." --Allan Massie, The Scotsman on Andreï Makine

"Andreï Makine has witnessed history transform his country. His somber, perceptive fiction reflects each ebb and flow; his quiet voice is unique . . . He articulates the profundity of human experience--no small feat." --The Irish Times on Andreï Makine

A beautifully observed and moving account of love and the human spirit in the Soviet era

In Soviet Russia the desire for freedom is also a desire for the freedom to love. Lovers live as outlaws, traitors to the collective spirit, and love is more intense when it feels like an act of resistance. Now entering middle age, an orphan recalls the fleeting moments that have never left him-a scorching day in a blossoming orchard with a woman who loves another; a furtive, desperate affair in a Black Sea resort; the bunch of snowdrops a crippled childhood friend gave him to give to his lover. As the dreary Brezhnev era gives way to perestroika and the fall of Communism, the orphan uncovers the truth behind the life of Dmitri Ress, whose tragic fate embodies the unbreakable bond between love and freedom.

"Makine has been compared to Stendhal, Tolstoy and Proust; our best historians of the Soviet era queue up to pronounce him one of the finest living writers on the period; and he is regularly tipped to be among the contenders for the next Nobel in literature." -The Daily Telegraph