An astounding novel that penetrates the 20th-century experience, from one of Europe's most feted authors

In present-day France a Russian writer recalls his harsh childhood at a Stalingrad orphanage in the 1960s and the old Frenchwoman, a family friend, whose tales fed his dreams of a better world. One story in particular has stayed with him: that of her brief, passionate affair, during World War II, with the French fighter pilot Jacques Dorme, who subsequently died in a plane crash in the Siberian mountains. So the narrator decides to retrace Jacques Dorme's steps, beginning a journey which leads him not only to revisit the land of his birth but also to see his adopted homeland in an unflattering new light. A profound and moving novel about the dangers of ideology and of war, delivered with humour, sensuousness and great lyricism.

"The year's finest novel . . . a truly remarkable achievement. Makine will surely one day win the Nobel Prize." - Francis King, Books of the Year, Spectator

"Undisputedly a novelist of genius . . . a remarkable work" - Spectator

"One of the most extraordinary novels I've read for a long time . . . endlessly fascinating and beautifully written" - Sunday Herald

"Hold[s] the reader in an emotional captivity from which there is no escape till long after the book has been put down" - Andrey Kurkov, Guardian

"This is a novel to read, and read again, with ever-deepening admiration." - Allan Massie, Literary Review

"One of the greatest European novelists of our time . . . When you leave a Makine novel, you are simultaneously bereft and enriched." - Herald

"With remarkable concision, he takes what could be vast and weighty topics - nationality, identity, memory and truth - and creates a series of unforgettable images and incidents." - Daily Mail

"'I was mightily impressed by The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme . . . it's beautifully crafted and still resonates. A modern masterpiece."" - George Rosie, Books of the Year, Sunday Herald

"'Makine packs great steppes-full of history into compact, bejewelled boxes of prose... An epic novel in - perfect - miniature.'" - Boyd Tonkin, Independent