The Woman Who Waited
On sale
22nd February 2007
Price: £10.99
‘Achingly beautiful’ Guardian
‘By turns touching and profoundly sad’ Spectator
When a young, rebellious writer from Leningrad arrives in a remote Russian village to study local customs, one woman stands out: Vera, who has been waiting thirty years for her lover to return from the Second World War. As fascinated as he is appalled by the fruitless fidelity of this still beautiful woman, he sets out to win her affections. But the better he thinks he understands her the more she surprises him, and the more he gains uncomfortable insights into himself.
Lyrically evoking the haunting beauty of the Archangel region, Makine tells a timeless story of the human heart and its capacity for enduring love, selfish passion and cowardly betrayal.
‘By turns touching and profoundly sad’ Spectator
When a young, rebellious writer from Leningrad arrives in a remote Russian village to study local customs, one woman stands out: Vera, who has been waiting thirty years for her lover to return from the Second World War. As fascinated as he is appalled by the fruitless fidelity of this still beautiful woman, he sets out to win her affections. But the better he thinks he understands her the more she surprises him, and the more he gains uncomfortable insights into himself.
Lyrically evoking the haunting beauty of the Archangel region, Makine tells a timeless story of the human heart and its capacity for enduring love, selfish passion and cowardly betrayal.
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Reviews
'Ravishing'
'Achingly beautiful'
'Bewitchingly mysterious...Makine's reputation rises with every book, and some have claimed that he deserves the Nobel Prize; on the strength of this teasing, emotionally dense novel, it's easy to see why'
'Luminous, enthralling...The enormity of the Second World War, with more than 20 million Russian dead, is allied with one, inconsolable human tragedy. This is where Makine dazzles. He can make the universal deeply intimate.'
'Beautiful...Makine gives us a work about love and its doppelganger, infatuation, which is by turns touching and profoundly sad'