Customer Reviews

The Vagabond

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Why I have put an autobiography of sorts is because while this is Isabelle Eberhards perhaps only novel (Most of her other stuff is just short stories) The main character is pretty much a reflection of her own life. The story is about a young Russian man of middle class upbringing who with is small group of left wing friends whiles away his time discussing politics and revolution. While the others have high ideals about how they want to change society he simply wants to opt out of the society he is in and live the life of a drifter or vagabond. While his friends see the poor as people to be educated and used for the revolution he sees nothing in them that needs educating and nothing in them that needs changing. Slowly he becomes alienated from his friends and takes to drink with the poor, the workmen and prostitutes of the local town until political events force him to flee abroad where he finally ends up in Marseilles where he works on the docks. Still politics is never far away and after a workers riot he flees again joining the foreign legion and travelling with them to Algeria where he lives out his life.

The translator has made some quite unfair comparisons to Tolstoy and other great Russian writers and while this book is hardly in their league I feel its much more personal. Its the story of a loaner but not only that someone who chooses to be alone, who rejects all that is around him to wander and not just wander as a middle class traveller and observer but as a wanderer going from place to place where he can earn a living. He doesn't ask from anyone and doesn't look to anyone for help. The book reflects not only the wandering spirit of its author but also the sexual exploits of it as well. The love of alcohol and hashish, the love of Arab culture which the main character sees as so similar to his own Russian, the numerous scrapes with the law he gets in (Was the incident with the sword taken from the attempted assassination of Eberhard?)

Yes, this is a story of a man who lives amongst the degradation of society however its without the sleaze of say Richard Burton, here is a man who loves humanity Burton comes across as a man who looks on with contempt at a large portion of it. All in all I enjoyed this book.