Dimensions
131 x 197 x 19mm
With 'Le Testament Francais', his fourth novel, Andrei Makine became the unprecedented winner of both the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Medicis, as well as the Prix Goncourt des Lyceens. Since publication it has sold nearly a million copies in France, and is being published in translation in twenty-six further countries.
The story of a boy's awakening in two parallel worlds: the Soviet Union of the Stalinist era and a mysterious, Atlantis-like country, created by a near-alchemical process from old photographs and newspaper clippings, and the memories and anecdotes his grandmother tells on the long Siberian nights of the school holidays. The grandmother, Charlotte, is a woman of French origins. She is a natural storyteller whose imagination has helped her survive, like Schederazade, through difficult times.
