Requiem for a lost empire / Andrei Makine ; translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan

Since his magisterial Dreams of My Russian Summer, Makine has released four novels in the United States (including this one), all lovely echoes in a minor key of that grand work. This is not to say that the succeeding works are either less successful or less original but that they all pick up themes from Dreams and investigate them more thoroughly. This newest novel is both a little weightier and a little more challenging than the previous three; Makine is always elliptical and dreamlike when telling his tale, but this one is particularly fractured, told in both first person (addressing a missing woman) and third person. At its heart is a former spy at odds with his past when the Soviet Union is no more and turns out to have been wrenchingly all for naught. As he recalls his family, which must endure revolution, World War II, and ostracism as enemies of the people, we are hit by the plentitude of Russia's tragedy in this century. How could the Russian people have suffered so much for so little?