Author(s): Andrei Makine

Fiction

Elias Almeida, professional revolutionary, has seen mankind at its pitiless worst. Witness as a child to the death of both his parents in uprisings in Angola and the Congo, and later as a Soviet agent at the heart of African politics, he has observed murder, rape, pillage and starvation in the name of ideology, and suffered imprisonment and torture. Yet he continues to believe in a better world and the redeeming power of love - the love of humanity, and the love between individuals. And in his own case, the love of one woman, a Russian who rescued him from thugs one snowy night on the streets of Moscow . . . Spanning forty years of Africa's tormented past as a battleground between East and West and ranging from Cuba to Siberia, this powerful, impassioned novel plumbs the depths of human nature, but shows the heights men and women are capable of reaching too.