Andreï Makine was born inKrasnoyarsk,Russian SFSR,Soviet Union on 10 September 1957 and grew up in the city ofPenza about 700 kilometres (435 mi) south-east of Moscow.[3] As a boy, having acquired familiarity with France and its language from his French-born grandmother,[4] he wrote poems in both French and his native Russian.
In 1987, he went to France as a member of a teacher's exchange program and decided to stay.[5] He was grantedpolitical asylum and was determined to make a living as a writer in French. However, Makine had to present his first manuscripts as translations from Russian to overcome publishers' skepticism that a newly arrived exile could write so fluently in a second language.[6] After disappointing reactions to his first two novels, it took eight months to find a publisher for his fourth,Dreams of My Russian Summers. Finally published in 1995 in France asLe testament français, the novel became the first in history to win both thePrix Goncourt and thePrix Médicis plus thePrix Goncourt des Lycéens.[7]
In 2001 Makine began secretively publishing as "Gabriel Osmonde", a total of four novels over ten years, the last appearing in 2011. It was considered a mystery among France's literary subculture; many speculated about who Osmonde might be until, in 2011, a scholar noticed Osmonde's book20,000 femmes dans la vie d'un homme seemed to have been inspired by Makine'sDreams of My Russian Summers. Makine confirmed that he was Osmonde.[1] Explaining why he used apseudonym, he said, "I wanted to create someone who lived far from the hurly-burly of the world".[8]
All English translations of Makine's novels are byGeoffrey Strachan.
Le testament français was published in English asDreams of My Russian Summers in the United States, and under its original French title in the United Kingdom. It has also been translated into Russian by Yuliana Yahnina and Natalya Shakhovskaya, and it was first published in Russian in 1996 in the 12th issue ofForeign Literature (Иностранная литература)literary magazine.[9]
^Christopher W. Lemelin, "Andrei Makine" inMulticultural Authors Since 1945(Amoia, Alba, and Bettina L Knapp, eds.). Oxford and Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2004.
Murielle Lucie Clément, author of a PhD ThesisAndreï Makine. Présence de l'absence: une poétique de l'art (photographie, cinéma, musique) and many articles on this author.(in French)
