The writer of Russian origin Andrei Makine between the French Academy – The World

Le Monde | 03/03/2016 at 4:33 p.m. • Updated 03/03/2016 at 17:58 | By Raphaelle Leyris

Andrei Makine, immortal. The writer was elected to the French Academy, Thursday, March 3, in the first round by 15 votes out of 26 voters. He succeeds Assia Djebar, who died in 2015, the chair No. 5. It’s crazy in love with the French language which will make its debut under the Dome, who was born in Russia in Krasnoyarsk (Siberia) in 1957 was naturalized french in 1996. french is the language of her grandmother, Charlotte, who teaches him, and send him the love of a country and a literature to which he devoted his thesis, conducted in Moscow University.

“I dreamed too long to France for not having a literary vision” explain one who secretly arrived in Paris in 1987, discover “inevitable syndrome strikes all foreigners enamored of France dreamed country, this country” . He settled in the district of Belleville, lives by giving courses on Russian literature and stylistically Normale sup and Sciences po, wrote a thesis on Ivan Bunin at the Sorbonne.

“The permanent despair”

He also writes, but only receives rejection letters. “It was the Roaring Twenties, the permanent despair” , he will explain to the World in 1995. Continuing: “I have done everything, to be published. I was called all sorts of names, I changed several titles, the first pages, and I was still trying, I sent my texts. “ It will eventually get his way by writing ” translated from Russian by Albert Lemonnier “ (surname of her French great-grandparents) on couverturee of The daughter of a hero of the Soviet union Robert Laffont published in 1990. Two years later, he uses the same subterfuge to the Confession of a fallen flag bearer ( Belfond).

It reveals the ploy in the french Testament , his fourth novel (Mercure de France, 1995), magnificent declaration of love for a country and a language rewarded Goncourt and the Prix Femina and sold 1 million copies. The public enthusiasm for the book as much as for this writer as a bearded Russian author must be as popular imagery, exiled, alone (he built a cabin in the Landes forest), powered on to the literary scene after years of accumulating rejection letters editor.

Against the “little novel in French”

the exile, purges, Stalin’s camps haunt his work continues to build in a french classical style to the resolutely – the Crime of Olga Arbélina , 1998 Requiem for the East , 2000 The Music of life , 2000 The Woman waiting , 2004 The short book of eternal loves , 2011 a woman loved , 2013 … He also wrote four books under the name of Gabriel Osmonde ( the Journey of a woman who was not afraid to age ; the 20,000 women in the life of a man , the Work of love and Alternaissance ); in 2011, he acknowledges having used this pseudonym.

Over the years, his love of France is tinged with a concern for what he thinks it is, and literature with her in 2006, he published as This France that we forget to love . Three years later, in The Life of an Unknown Man (Threshold), his character says his hatred of “minions writers that flatter the ego of BOFs and bobos” , and “little romance to the French, a hundred pages of sleeping around and Parisian depressed” .

the recognition enjoyed his work was Andrei Makine the candidate most serious to succeed Assia Djebar. In early February, when he announced his candidacy, Frédéric Mitterrand and Jean-Claude Perrier withdrew theirs.