Favourite Archipelago Books

I have been busy in May setting up and moving into our new home, so haven’t read much, and therefore haven’t blogged much either.  So I have decided to put up another themed post instead, this time on some of my favourite Archipelago books in the last five years (of course, this list will evolve and could even change as I read more from the catalogue). It is also the third “Publisher” themed post on this blog – the first was on Fitzcarraldo Editions called The Best of the Blues, and the second was on my Favourite NYRB Classics.

So without much ado, here is my selection of eight favourite Archipelagos. For detailed reviews on each book, you can click on the title link…

THE ENLIGHTENMENT OF KATZUO NAKAMATSU by Augusto Higa Oshiro (Translated from Spanish by Jennifer Shyue)

Laden with poetic despair and immersed in a sea of swirling sentences, Augusto Higa Oshiro’s The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu is an elusive, enigmatic, and intense tale of death, madness, isolation, and identity; a brilliant walking novel drenched in dreamlike vibes as it evocatively captures the pulse of Lima, its myriad sights and sounds, making it a deeply haunting reading experience.

We meet Katzuo Nakamatsu on the very first page standing on a pebbled path one August evening mesmerised by the magnificence of the sakura blossoms. If this conveys an aura of peace and tranquility, then it proves short-lived, because Katzuo is immediately gripped by an unnamable anguish, “the weight of consciousness, unseeing affliction.”

The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu is replete with an array of sights, sounds, and rich imagery lending the novel a very tonal and visual quality that only enhances its strange beauty. The lyrical, labyrinthine, looping sentences not only convey the complex pathways of Katzuo’s disturbed mind but also the contours of the city on his walking jaunts – a place of contrasts alternating between sumptuous gardens, hypnotic beaches, quiet affluent neighbourhoods on one side, and the squalid, forbidden corners depicting degradation and filth on the other.

EASTBOUND by Maylis de Kerangal (translated from French by Jessica Moore)

Set aboard the Trans-Siberian Express, Eastbound is a stunning, propulsive, and suspenseful novella of fugitives, flight, and freedom. A young conscript Aliocha, barely twenty, is travelling with a slew of men of his ilk to some godforsaken outpost in Siberia. Right till the last moment, Aliocha refuses to believe that he will be forced to sign up for military service even when all his attempts to avoid conscription prove futile. Now he is on the train galloping towards an unknown destination beset by dread, entrapment, and the driving urgency to escape.

And yet, the strange workings of Fate throw him a lifeline. He meets Hélène, an older Frenchwoman in her 40s, who we learn is also a fugitive although Aliocha has no inkling of this at the time. As this fast and furious, adrenaline-charged novella hurtles towards its conclusion, Aliocha and Hélène will encounter some heart-stopping moments that could thwart their uneasy alliance and derail their journey toward freedom. 

Thundering like a juggernaut, and teeming with nerve-wracking tension, Eastbound soars thanks to Kerangal’s gorgeous, haunting prose with its musical cadences and potent energy.

AUTUMN ROUNDS by Jacques Poulin (Translated from French Sheila Fischman)

Autumn Rounds is a subtle, beguiling novel about books and nature, a meditation on forming connections and finding love late in life that has the feel of a travelogue, both charming and melancholy at the same time.

The book opens on the eve of the Driver embarking on his summer tour. He hears faint notes of music drifting into his room, and when he heads out for a walk, he comes across a motley crew of performers – musicians, acrobats, jugglers – putting on a show on the streets for the audience. But then he chances upon Marie, the group’s manager of sorts, with “a beautiful face like Katharine Hepburn’s, a mixture of tenderness and strength”, and the attraction is immediate prompting them to strike up a conversation.

The Driver is entranced by Marie and her troupe, and they, in turn, are enamoured by the idea of a bookmobile, and soon an agreement is reached wherein the troupe will follow the same route taken by the Driver on his summer tour. The Driver arranges for a school bus for Marie and her crew for the purpose of this trip and they are all ready to set off. It’s a bittersweet, quietly powerful novel, a soothing balm for the soul, and there’s something about the goodness and kindness of the people within its pages that touches the heart.

A CHANGE OF TIME by Ida Jessen (Translated from Danish by Martin Aitken)

Set in a rural Danish village in the early 20^th century, A Change of Time is a beautiful, quiet, and reflective novel told through the diary entries of a schoolteacher called Frau Bagge. The novel begins when her husband, Vigand Bagge, a mocking and cruel man, and who is also a respected village doctor, passes away. Subsequently, the novel charts her response to his death and her attempts to build herself a new life, find herself a new place and identity, and discover meaning in life again. An exquisitely written novel.

AN UNTOUCHED HOUSE by Willem Frederik Hermans (Translated from Dutch by David Colmer)

An Untouched House is a spare, taut war thriller sprinkled with doses of absurd comedy that considerably heightens its narrative power. Set during the waning months of the Second World War, when madness still abounds, a weary Dutch partisan chances upon a luxurious, intact estate in an abandoned spa town. Enjoying the comforts of this home while the war outside rages on, the partisan is hell-bent on avoiding the fighting at all costs, until the real owner of the house turns up. At less than 100 pages, An Untouched House pulses and throbs with dramatic tension in which, Hermans, in his unique way, confronts us with the idea of the violent absurdity of war and its terrible consequences for those unwittingly involved.

THE BIRDS by Tarjei Vesaas (Translated from Norwegian by Michael Barnes & Torbjorn Stoverud)

In The Birds, our protagonist is 37-year-old Mattis, who is possibly mentally challenged and lives with his elder sister Hege in a cottage by the lake in a Norwegian village. Since Mattis is not able to hold on to any job, the responsibility of providing falls on Hege’s shoulders, and she is now tired and lonely. Until one day a lumberjack called Jorgen enters their lives and uproots their daily existence. This is a sad but gorgeous novel about the difficulty of communicating with one another and the hurdles that intellectually disabled individuals have to grapple with.

DIFFICULT LIGHT by Tomás González (Translated from Spanish by Andrea Rosenberg)

A poignant, beautiful book touching upon big themes of family, loss, art, and the critical question of whether death can provide relief from a life filled with chronic pain.  González is compassionate without being overtly sentimental. It’s a deeply moving novel that dwells on the intimacy and humour of a family, of displaying resilience amid pain, and as another author has put it, “manages to say new things about the way we feel.”

LOVE by Hanne Ørstavik (Translated from Norwegian by Martin Aitken)

Love is an unsettling novella set over the course of a single evening and night in a remote village in Norway during winter. Vibeke and her son Jon have just moved into this small village a few months ago. We are told in the opening pages that tomorrow is Jon’s birthday and he will turn 9 years old.

From the outset, it becomes apparent that there is some kind of disconnect between mother and son. Jon is pretty sure that Vibeke is going to bake a cake for his birthday tomorrow and decides to give her all the space she needs to do so. Vibeke, meanwhile, has forgotten her son’s birthday – something that is clear to the reader, but not to Jon. On that particular night, Vibeke and Jon are out of the house, but on their own with no inkling of what the other is up to.

Ørstavik infuses enough tension in her writing so that at the end of the chapters you are left wondering whether it will all turn out well for both mother and son. That the story is set in the depths of winter in a country close to the Arctic, serves as an atmospheric and stark contrast to the protagonists’ search for warmth and a sense of belonging.

Best of 2023: The Runner-Up Quartet

Just a couple of days back, I released my Best Books of 2023 list featuring 20 brilliant books by some excellent authors (past favourites and new discoveries). But there were four books I felt bad about leaving out, although I had to because I was determined to limit my list to 20. These books might have missed the list by a whisker, but on any other day, they could very well have been part of it. So then, this blog post is my way of highlighting these four terrific books separately.

As usual, for detailed reviews on each, you can click on the title links…

A WREATH FOR THE ENEMY by Pamela Frankau

Pamela Frankau’s A Wreath for the Enemy – a wonderful coming-of-age tale of family, morality, friendships, and navigating the treacherous terrain of growing up, alternately set in the glittering Riviera and the quiet English countryside.

A montage of distinct voices and first-person narratives, the book is divided into three sections, each section told from a different point of view. The first part called “The Duchess and the Smugs” is narrated by Penelope Wells, our unforgettable charming heroine with a singular style of speech and a bohemian upbringing. Longing for an environment of peace and stability, Penelope is entranced by the Bradley family next door and spends time with the two children, but a tragedy at the end of the first section will teach Penelope not to take her freedom for granted plus she will finally see the Bradleys for who they are.

The point of view shifts in the second section which is now told from Don Bradley’s perspective in the first person and charts his friendship with the crippled genius Crusoe, while in the final section called “The Road by the River”, we are back with Penelope, but this is also a section where a panoply of narratives are introduced notably those of Cara de Bretteville and Livesey Raines, two characters who take centre stage in the final part and whose lives collide with that of Penelope.

By turns tender, wise, and perceptive, shimmering with lively tête-à-têtes and lush settings, A Wreath for the Enemy is a glorious, beautifully rendered novel about love, death, freedom, friendships, and forgiveness. 

A HELPING HAND by Celia Dale

A Helping Hand is a deliciously compelling, brilliant tale of lies, greed and deception, loneliness, and the heartaches of growing old.

There’s something sinister about Josh and Maisie Evans, the novel’s other protagonists, in the opening pages. An elderly woman, Aunt Flo, lodging with them, has just expired, and the two are seen going through her papers and the contents of her bag. What also lends an eerie air to this chapter is the sense that Aunt Flo was not really related to them in any way and that Josh and Maisie had murky motives for taking her on. In the next chapter, we find ourselves in Italy where creepy Maisie and Josh befriend a wealthy old lady Mrs Cynthia Fingal and her niece-cum-chaperone Lena. Mrs Fingal and Lena resent living together and the Evanses, sensing an opportunity, offer to accommodate Mrs Fingal after their vacation.

Sharply observed, astute, and utterly riveting, A Helping Hand is domestic horror at its finest where Dale deftly and with aplomb exposes the hidden depths of sheer evil, the darkness prevalent in the banality of everyday life that often goes unnoticed. 

EASTBOUND by Maylis de Kerangal (Translated from French by Jessica Moore)

Set aboard the Trans-Siberian Express, Eastbound is a stunning, propulsive, and suspenseful novella of fugitives, flight, and freedom. A young conscript Aliocha, barely twenty, is travelling with a slew of men of his ilk to some godforsaken outpost in Siberia. Right till the last moment, Aliocha refuses to believe that he will be forced to sign up for military service even when all his attempts to avoid conscription prove futile. Now he is on the train galloping towards an unknown destination beset by dread, entrapment, and the driving urgency to escape.

And yet, the strange workings of Fate throw him a lifeline. He meets Hélène, an older Frenchwoman in her 40s, who we learn is also a fugitive although Aliocha has no inkling of this at the time. As this fast and furious, adrenaline-charged novella hurtles towards its conclusion, Aliocha and Hélène will encounter some heart-stopping moments that could thwart their uneasy alliance and derail their journey toward freedom. 

Thundering like a juggernaut, and teeming with nerve-wracking tension, Eastbound soars thanks to Kerangal’s gorgeous, haunting prose with its musical cadences and potent energy.

AFTER RAIN by William Trevor

Tender and exquisite, After Rain is a finely chiseled collection of twelve stories that is truly a joy to savour.  The first, ‘The Piano Tuner’s Wives’, is an achingly poignant, richly layered, and sensitively written story about the passage of time on two marriages – two women married to the same man at different points in his life and the bitterness that engulfs the second wife who is unable to emerge from the shadow of the first; while ‘A Friendship’ is a fine, beautifully rendered tale of female friendship, marriage and an extramarital affair that threatens to ruin both. ‘Child’s Play’ is a subtle story of the breakdown of a marriage and its repercussions seen through the eyes of the children involved; the titular story ‘AFTER RAIN’ is a beautiful, melancholic tale of lost love and finding the strength to heal and carry on. 

Trevor focuses his unflinching lens on parents and children, friends and lovers, widows, husbands and wives as much as he does on petty thieves and confidence tricksters capturing their innermost turmoil beautifully.

In a nutshell…

Barring Trevor, I read the other authors for the first time this year and I’ll be reading more of all four in 2024. I have many Trevor treasures to choose from (might go with The Children of Dynmouth), then there is Celia Dale’s Sheep’s Clothing, Kerangal’s Mend the Living, and Frankau’s The Winged Horse and The Willow Cabin. Looking forward to some good 2024 reading!

A Month of Reading – November 2023

I read some excellent books in November and could read more thanks to some novellas thrown into the mix, as part of my contribution to the ‘Novellas in November’ reading project hosted by Cathy and Rebecca. I also participated in Kim’s #NYRBWomen23 readalong and to me the Jansson was the last book on this stellar list (I’ve already read the December selections in previous years) and I’m so glad this readalong ended on such a high, I’ll be back next year for #NYRBWomen24. In a nutshell, November was predominantly a month of short stories and novellas. All the books were great, but if I had to pick favourites it would be the Kerangal and the Frankau.

So, here’s a brief look at the six books…You can read the detailed reviews on each by clicking on the title links.

ROMAN STORIES by Jhumpa Lahiri (Translated from Italian by Jhumpa Lahiri & Todd Portnowitz)

Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri is a quiet, contemplative, excellent collection of nine short stories at the heart of which lies the theme that is so central to her writing – the experiences of the immigrant or the outsider – but this time set in the pulsating, vibrant capital of Italy.

“The Boundary” is a beautifully penned story of family, city versus country life, trauma, and the pleasures of simple living set in an unnamed village in the Italian countryside, and told from the perspective of a caretaker’s daughter. One of my favourites “P’s Parties” unspools languorously and is a stunning piece on friendships, community, loss in its myriad forms, and unexpected bonds. “The Steps”, one of the longer stories in the collection, is excellent in the way a particular place in the Italian capital forms the vantage point from which the lives of six residents encompassing varied social spheres are explored, while “Dante Alighieri” is another wonderful story of reinvention, living life on your own terms, and the crucial crossroads that mark this journey

Written in spare, elegant language, Lahiri’s writing is subtle and intimate, the sentences simple but imbued with much depth. A tinge of melancholy pervades these stories and heightens their haunting power suffused with a lingering sense of what’s been lost or could have been. Roman Stories, then, is another fine collection from Jhumpa Lahiri once again showcasing her mastery of the short story form.

MY DEATH by Lisa Tuttle

Lisa Tuttle’s My Death is a wonderfully uncanny, subversive tale of artists and creativity, identity, and the erasure of women in the world of art.

A writer by profession, we are told how our unnamed narrator has lost her mojo for conjuring up stories, especially since her beloved husband, Allan’s death. Utterly adrift but realising the need for change, she sets up a meeting with her agent Selwyn in Edinburgh. On the appointed day, our narrator visits the National Gallery where a painting stops her in her tracks. Titled “Circe” and painted by the artist W.E. Logan in 1928, we learn that Logan’s muse for this painting was the young art student Helen Ralston who, flattered by Logan’s interest in her, leaves America to study art in Glasgow. Our narrator is suddenly inspired to write a biography on Helen Ralston about whom not much is known or written, and is pleasantly surprised to learn that Ralston is still alive albeit quite old.

However, when the meeting between the creator and her subject takes place, things take a peculiar, unsettling turn, when uncannily the lives of Helen Ralston and our narrator begin to intertwine…

EASTBOUND by Maylis de Kerangal (Translated from French by Jessica Moore)

Set aboard the Trans-Siberian Express, Eastbound is a stunning, propulsive, and suspenseful novella of fugitives, flight, and freedom. A young conscript Aliocha, barely twenty, is travelling with a slew of men of his ilk to some godforsaken outpost in Siberia. Right till the last moment, Aliocha refuses to believe that he will be forced to sign up for military service even when all his attempts to avoid conscription prove futile. Now he is on the train galloping towards an unknown destination beset by dread, entrapment, and the driving urgency to escape.

And yet, the strange workings of Fate throw him a lifeline. He meets Hélène, an older Frenchwoman in her 40s, who we learn is also a fugitive although Aliocha has no inkling of this at the time. As this fast and furious, adrenaline-charged novella hurtles towards its conclusion, Aliocha and Hélène will encounter some heart-stopping moments that could thwart their uneasy alliance and derail their journey toward freedom. 

Thundering like a juggernaut, and teeming with nerve-wracking tension, Eastbound soars thanks to Kerangal’s gorgeous, haunting prose with its musical cadences and potent energy.

A WREATH FOR THE ENEMY by Pamela Frankau

Pamela Frankau’s A Wreath for the Enemy – a wonderful coming-of-age tale of family, morality, friendships, and navigating the treacherous terrain of growing up, alternately set in the glittering Riviera and the quiet English countryside.

A montage of distinct voices and first-person narratives, the book is divided into three sections, each section told from a different point of view. The first part called “The Duchess and the Smugs” is narrated by Penelope Wells, our unforgettable charming heroine with a singular style of speech and a bohemian upbringing. Longing for an environment of peace and stability, Penelope is entranced by the Bradley family next door and spends time with the two children, but a tragedy at the end of the first section will teach Penelope not to take her freedom for granted plus she will finally see the Bradleys for who they are.

The point of view shifts in the second section which is now told from Don Bradley’s perspective in the first person and charts his friendship with the crippled genius Crusoe, while in the final section called “The Road by the River”, we are back with Penelope, but this is also a section where a panoply of narratives are introduced notably those of Cara de Bretteville and Livesey Raines, two characters who take centre stage in the final part and whose lives collide with that of Penelope.

By turns tender, wise, and perceptive, shimmering with lively tête-à-têtes and lush settings, A Wreath for the Enemy is a glorious, beautifully rendered novel about love, death, freedom, friendships, and forgiveness. 

THE WOMAN WHO BORROWED MEMORIES: SELECTED STORIES by Tove Jansson (Translated from Swedish by Thomas Teal & Silvester Mazzarella)

Tove Jansson’s The Woman Who Borrowed Memories is a sublime collection of short stories displaying Jansson’s delicate touch and mastery of the form complete with rich characterisations, evocative and often solitary settings, and keen insights on the nuances of human relationships. This collection comprises 26 stories assembled from five books (The Listener, The Doll’s House, Traveling Light, Letters from Klara, and Messages: Selected Stories) published between 1971 and 1998 and showcases Jansson’s incredible range. 

“The Listener” is a beautifully expressed, poignant character study of an aging woman losing her sense of self as well as a meditation on loneliness and finding a purpose. “Black-White” is an homage to the talented artist and illustrator Edward Gorey; a story that dwells on the process of creating art with the artist’s sometimes obsessive tendency to strive for perfection. Another favourite “The Cartoonist” is a wonderful, unsettling piece on the price of ambition and the perils associated with the commercialization of art, while jealousy and rivalry take centre stage in “The Doll’s House”, which begins on an innocuous note but steadily descends into violence. 

In graceful, sensitive prose that is filled with air and light, Jansson’s deceptively simple and enchanting writing style transforms into something profound as the stories progress often belying the darker undercurrents flowing underneath.

GHACHAR GHOCHAR by Vivek Shanbhag (Translated from Kannada by Srinath Perur)

Vivek Shanbhag’s Ghachar Ghochar is a smartly-written, unsettling novella on the erosion of values, egos in relationships, and the evils of capitalism observed through the prism of one family, while also being an astute portrayal of middle-class urban India.

The book opens in a bar and restaurant called the Coffee House where our troubled unnamed narrator, a young man, is seeking refuge from the problems back home. What has particularly unnerved him is a nasty incident several days ago, an ensuing family fight, and its disturbing implications. Subsequent chapters flesh out the characters in greater detail which also provides a window to the family’s middle-class, humble origins; we get more details about the joint family he lives in with his wife Anita consisting of his parents Appa and Amma, his uncle Chikkappa, and his sister Malati. The novella enters a dark place in its feverish, final pages, insinuating a scenario that is frightening yet entirely plausible.

At barely a little over 100 pages, Ghachar Ghochar (slang for something messy and entangled), then, subtly touches on a wide range of topics – fragile family dynamics, gender politics, but more importantly how tensions over money can deteriorate relationships – and is immensely readable.

That’s it for November. In December, I’m reading The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger, a brilliant novel so far but one that is also filling me with dread. I hope to write a review as soon as I finish. More importantly, plan to release “My Best Books of 2023” list around mid-December, so watch this space!

Eastbound – Maylis de Kerangal (tr. Jessica Moore)

I first heard of Maylis de Kerangal when her novel Mend the Living was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, a book that generally received favourable reviews. I’ve yet to read it but when Les Fugitives and Archipelago Books published Eastbound a few months ago, I was immediately intrigued by its premise. And this novella turned out to be as good as I had hoped. Also, this is my second contribution to “Novellas in November” (#NovNov23) after Lisa Tuttle’s wonderful My Death, which I reviewed last week.  

More than halfway through Maylis de Kerangal’s Eastbound, while aboard the Trans-Siberian Express, looms the magnificent Lake Baikal, Russia’s majestic natural wonder and a symbol of pride. As this lake comes into view, the train’s passengers flock to the windows in “a beautiful synchronized movement” clicking pictures trying to capture the magic of this lake, a lake that is “alternately the inland sea and the sky inversed, the chasm and the sanctuary, the abyss and purity, tabernacle and diamond, the blue eye of the earth and the beauty of the world.” Leaving the private turmoil of their lives aside, lives that are hidden from one another, for that brief period the passengers are united by the wonder of this shimmering expanse of water they have glimpsed. Even Hélène, a Frenchwoman, and one of the novella’s protagonists is swept away by the fever that grips the train’s passengers at that moment, momentarily oblivious of the bigger problem that awaits her in her first-class compartment.

It is this frightening predicament and its uncertain consequences that form the crux of Eastbound – a stunning, propulsive, and suspenseful novella of fugitives, flight, and freedom.

We are transported to the Trans-Siberian Express in the novella’s opening pages, where a young conscript Aliocha, barely twenty, is travelling with a slew of men of his ilk to some godforsaken outpost in Siberia. Right till the last moment, Aliocha refuses to believe that he will be forced to sign up for military service even when all his attempts to avoid conscription prove futile. Aliocha is hardly alone in his fear and dread of the draft; we are told that countless other men aged between eighteen and twenty-seven have no desire to serve in the Army, devising all kinds of ways to extricate themselves from it. Reprieves, false medical certificates, bribery, and fatherhood are reasons enough to be granted an exemption but not all individuals are going to succeed in this regard. Aliocha certainly doesn’t and now he is on the train galloping towards an unknown destination beset by dread, entrapment, and the driving urgency to escape.

Aliocha is scared. Siberia – fuck! This is what he’s thinking, stone in his belly, as though seized with panic at the idea of plunging further into what he knows to be a territory of banishment, giant oubliette of the Tsarist empire before it turns Gulag country. A forbidden perimeter, a silent space, faceless. A black hole. The cadence of the train, monotonous, rather than numbing his anxiety, shakes it up and revives it, unspools lines of deportees, pickaxes in hand, stumbling through swirling snowstorms, stirs the frail shacks lined up in the middle of nowhere, hair frozen to wooden floor planks in the night, dead bodies stiff under the permafrost, blurred images of a territory from which no one returns.

But how is a young man, inexperienced in the ways of the world going to achieve that insurmountable feat? Aliocha does try though. As the first station approaches and the men get down on the platform to stretch their legs, Aliocha manages to slink away but can’t bring himself to go the full hog because he is now gripped by an even bigger dilemma – if he does escape how can he possibly fend for himself without any means?

Back on the train, a sense of hopelessness washes over Aliocha and yet, the strange workings of Fate throw him a lifeline. He meets Hélène, an older Frenchwoman in her 40s, who we learn is also a fugitive although Aliocha has no inkling of this at the time. Language being a barrier, the two can’t communicate, but in the split of a second Helene understands the import of Aliocha’s pleading gestures and decides to help him, allowing him to hide in her compartment.

The countryside speeds by now through the openings in the grey cell they’ve occupied together, side by side, two beans in a pod, united in the same jolts, the same moments of acceleration and of slowing down, where they’ve intertwined the smoke from their cigarettes and the warmth of their breath. Aliocha holds his breath now, he’s no beggar, no victim, he’s just like her, he’s running away, that’s all. The woman looks the boy straight in the eye – a clearing opens, very green, in the dirty dawn – and bites her lip. Follow me.

Hélène, we learn, is desperate to run away herself, far away from her lover Anton. We are told of how they meet in Paris and fall in love (“At first she loves the fact that he is free, that Russia disgusts him, that he has neither nostalgia nor remorse”). Hélène, it seems, is smitten by the idea of Russia and the streams of images it conjures up in her mind rather than the reality of Russia. When Anton visits Siberia and Helene accompanies him there, she is touched by Anton’s ease with his people in familiar surroundings, but it’s a different picture for Hélène. She is lost, lonely, and unable to adjust to the harshness of Russian life. Unable to go on, she suddenly decides to flee, jumping aboard the first train that comes along which happens to be the Trans-Siberian Express, but which alas is moving in the opposite direction to the furthest point in the East towards the Pacific, when Hélène wants to go west to Paris.

Enmeshed with Aliocha and Hélène’s anxiety-inducing journey on the train, we meet other crucial characters such as the terrifying Sergeant Letchov who must never learn of Aliocha’s plans of desertion as well as the “provodnitsas” or train attendants – “those cross-border agents without a passport moving from one republic to the next” – both feared and held in high regard but with a murky history of their own.

As the tension mounts and this fast and furious, adrenaline-charged novella hurtles towards its conclusion, Aliocha and Hélène will encounter some heart-stopping moments that could thwart their uneasy alliance and derail their journey toward freedom. 

Kerangal brilliantly captures the ever-fragile connection between Aliocha and Hélène, a tenuous bond that is always on the verge of snapping any moment but depicted with remarkable nuance and tenderness. His youth and his desire to flee mirroring her own compel Hélène to take a massive risk in helping Aliocha, but she is also quickly frustrated by his presence. Feeling trapped and unnerved by their circumstances and the enormous burden of being responsible for him, Hélène wishes to get rid of him as soon as possible. Aliocha, meanwhile, is also tentative around her, unsure of Hélène’s motives. At one point, desperate to disguise himself, he even threatens Hélène and while that escalates the tension between them, she still can’t quite bring herself to abandon him.

Eastbound is a deeply atmospheric book with its striking, vivid sense of place and the rich inner worlds of its two hunted protagonists. Parallels are brilliantly drawn between the arresting images of the stark, desolate, immense snow-laden Siberian landscape and the sense of isolation and panic that pervades Aliocha’s thoughts, a soulless expanse that also stifles Hélène. The compressed space of the train where the action plays out is as frightening and claustrophobic as the vast, empty terrain through which it powers.

The train again. Monotonous rolling, cyclical clicking, axles warming up, shrieks of metal and, if you listened close, you’d also hear – like a tiny soundtrack woven into this hellhole – the torment of Aliocha’s heart, there, back again in the compartment of the Trans-Siberian, back in his spot next to the window, and once again hypnotised by the rails, the short portion of tracks that are illuminated for a fraction of a second by the train’s rear lights, the whitish trail that closes space again immediately in its passage, relegating it to a zone behind, unformed and pulsating, delivering it to the amniotic dark of origins.

Thundering like a juggernaut, and teeming with nerve-wracking tension, Eastbound soars thanks to Kerangal’s gorgeous, haunting prose with its musical cadences and potent energy; beautiful, lush sentences that unspool like the rhythmic beats of the train. It’s a subtle statement on the conflicting realities of war, highlighting the resistance to enforced conscription, and the plight of men compelled to sign up for a cause they don’t much care for. A story of two unlikely individuals, their fates interlinked by their pursuit of freedom, will Aliocha and Hélène ultimately succeed?