Hero's Daughter [Paperback]

Andrei Makine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 2005

In World War II Ivan Demidov won the Red Army's highest award for bravery, that of Hero of the Soviet Union. But the decades following the War have brought him a life of hardship, alleviated only by his pride in this achievement and the modest privileges granted to War veterans. His daughter, Olya, on the other hand, born in 1961 and trained as a linguist, takes up a post as an interpreter at Moscow's International Business Center with access to a metropolitan lifestyle beyond the dreams of her parents. The only catch is that her job involves servicing foreign businessmen around the clock and passing on information about them to the KGB. This is a stunning drama of disillusionment and tension between the two generations: the one that grew up under Stalin and saw its faith in him crumble and the one that grew up under Brezhnev, fixated on the glamour of the West and its material goods. Makine's vivid and authentic evocation of daily life in post-war Soviet Russia matches in its intensity the portraits of nineteenth-century Russian life offered by Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The Russian-born, Paris-based Makine vaulted into prominence with his fourth novel, Dreams of My Russian Summers, which won France's two most prestigious literary prizes. Since then, along with newer novels (most recently Music of a Life), a steady stream of his earlier work has appeared in English. Here, in his first published book, he provides an early glimpse at one of his recurring themes: the way the Soviet system prostituted-literally, in some cases-its most promising citizens. Ivan Demidov is an official Hero of the Soviet Union, a distinction he earned in the bloody defense of Moscow during WWII. Since then, he has worn the Hero's Gold Star, which earns him the respect of other citizens and the very practical right to extra rations at understocked grocery stores. For a while, he is celebrated in propagandistic television programs and asked to make patriotic speeches at elementary schools, until newer Heroes-from the fighting in Afghanistan-take his place. His talented daughter, Olya, is trained as an interpreter but sent to work at the governmental International Trade Center, where educated, attractive Russians "entertain" foreigners on whom the KGB wishes to spy. There are signs of inexperience here: Ivan and Olya are less fully realized characters than walking metaphors for Soviet exploitation. But present in this ably translated work are the seeds of the powerful social criticism that flowers in Makine's more mature novels.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Makine won wide critical acclaim for Dreams of My Russian Summer (1997). A Hero's Daughter is his first novel and, like his other books, shows the lasting and devastating effects of Stalin's brutal reign of terror. Ivan Davidov is a World War II hero who was awarded one of Russia's highest medals. Throughout his adult life, through marriage (to his wartime nurse) and fatherhood, he is accorded some special treatment as he and his fellow countrymen eke out an existence, but he eventually discovers that his medal and special treatment enslave him to the government system. During the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, his daughter, Olya, works as an interpreter and has a dalliance with a foreign athlete. The discovery of this causes her to be equally enslaved to the government, more specifically to the KGB, where she becomes entrenched in a life of espionage and political prostitution. Eventually, Gorbachev takes power in Russia, brings glasnost and perestroika, and both father and daughter confront each other, as well as their own despair, during a moving conclusion. Michael Spinella
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Sceptre (January 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0340751282
• ISBN-13: 978-0340751282
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,178,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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