Dreams of My Russian Summers

Again available from Arcade, Andreï Makine's luminous and haunting novel of a young boy's sentimental journey into manhood. Every summer young Andreï visits his grandmother, Charlotte Lemmonier, whom he loves dearly. In a dusty village overlooking the vast Russian steppes, she captivates her grandson and the other children of the village with wondrous tales—watching Proust play tennis in Neuilly, Tsar Nicholas II's visit to Paris, French president Felix Faure dying in the arms of his mistress. But from his mysterious grandmother Andreï also learns of a Russia he has never known: a country of famine and misery, brutal injustice, and the hopeless chaos of war. Enthralled, he weaves her stories into his own secret universe of memory and dream. A poignant story of a Soviet boy's ascent into adulthood in the 1960s and '70s, Dreams of My Russian Summers is an epic tale full of passion and tenderness, pain and heartbreak, mesmerizing in every way.