A Russian View of the Angolan War
Although this is a Russian account of the Angolan war, it is "Russian" with a difference, because Andreï Makine writes from his exile in Paris, where he has been based since 1987 and where he has written several internationally acclaimed novels about his native land. Writing in French, he won both the prestigious Goncourt Prize and the Medicis Prize for his earlier novel Dreams of My Russian Summers (1997).
Too young for "the God that failed" generation of disillusioned Communists in the 1930s, Makine belongs to the generation that lived through the rise and fall of the Soviet Empire and the disintegration of the Communist dream. Human Love is an important novel, providing both an accurate and a very readable account of the war in Angola and the role of the Soviet Union in that conflict. The diplomatic and Cold War historians who fail to understand that war or appreciate its international significance will have much to learn from this book.
The two main characters are the "hero," Elias Almeida, an MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) cadre who is sent to Moscow for training, and the narrator, an anonymous Soviet diplomat in Angola who becomes his lifelong friend. Beginning with their meeting in a UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) prison camp on the border with Zaire, from which they are soon rescued by Cuban soldiers, the book ends with the gratuitous death of Elias during the Somali civil war some twenty-five years later.
[Full review here]
Although this is a Russian account of the Angolan war, it is "Russian" with a difference, because Andreï Makine writes from his exile in Paris, where he has been based since 1987 and where he has written several internationally acclaimed novels about his native land. Writing in French, he won both the prestigious Goncourt Prize and the Medicis Prize for his earlier novel Dreams of My Russian Summers (1997).
Too young for "the God that failed" generation of disillusioned Communists in the 1930s, Makine belongs to the generation that lived through the rise and fall of the Soviet Empire and the disintegration of the Communist dream. Human Love is an important novel, providing both an accurate and a very readable account of the war in Angola and the role of the Soviet Union in that conflict. The diplomatic and Cold War historians who fail to understand that war or appreciate its international significance will have much to learn from this book.
The two main characters are the "hero," Elias Almeida, an MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) cadre who is sent to Moscow for training, and the narrator, an anonymous Soviet diplomat in Angola who becomes his lifelong friend. Beginning with their meeting in a UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) prison camp on the border with Zaire, from which they are soon rescued by Cuban soldiers, the book ends with the gratuitous death of Elias during the Somali civil war some twenty-five years later.
[Full review here]
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