In work after work, the critically acclaimed author Emmanuel Carrère has trained his unblinking gaze on the lives of others as they fight a losing battle with that most fearsome of adversaries—the self. Now, determined to escape the bleak visions of his narratives, he takes on a film project in the heart of Russia while also embarking on a new love affair back home in Paris. But soon enough, the diversion he seeks eludes him, intimacy proves too arduous, and Carrère is left peering into the dark mirror of his own life.
Set in Paris and Kotelnich, a small post-Soviet town, My Life as a Russian Novel traces Carrère's pursuit of two obsessions—the disappearance of his Russian grandfather and his erotic fascination with a woman he loves but cannot keep from destroying. In prose that is elegant and passionate, Carrère weaves the strands of his story into a travelogue of a journey inward. Road trip, confession, erotic tour de force—this fearless reckoning illuminates the schemes we devise to evade ourselves and the inevitable payment they exact.
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"taking literary courage to a different level"
— Ana (5 out of 5 stars)
Intelligent, well-written and scrupulously honest.
— Kirkus" love Carrere, but it's a little self-indulgent "
— Steven, 8/25/2013" as sad as life "
— Jeffery, 2/7/2013" een boeiend verhaal over een man die in zijn thuisleven (zijn vriendin) en in zijn werk (een tv-reportage in rusland) dreigt vast te lopen....het blijft wat kunstmatig die paralel... "
— Wies, 8/9/2012" Perplexe, je reste quelque peu sur ma fin. "
— Sandrine, 8/25/2011Emmanuel Carrère, a finalist for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2017, is a Paris-born writer, scriptwriter, and film producer. He is the award-winning, internationally renowned author of Limonov, The Kingdom, The Mustache, Class Trip, The Adversary (a New York Times Notable Book), My Life As a Russian Novel, and Lives Other Than My Own, which was awarded the Globe de Cristal for Best Novel in 2010. For Limonov, he received the Prix Renaudot and the Prix des Prix in 2011 and the Europese Literatuurprijs in 2013. Several of his books have been made into films, and in 2005, he personally directed the film adaptation of his novel La Moustache.
Simon Vance (a.k.a. Robert Whitfield) is an award-winning actor and narrator. He has earned more than fifty Earphones Awards and won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration thirteen times. He was named Booklist’s very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009. He has narrated more than eight hundred audiobooks over almost thirty years, beginning when he was a radio newsreader for the BBC in London. He is also an actor who has appeared on both stage and television.