Overview

‘Richly atmospheric and full of suspense, Eastbound combines a vibrant account of one of the most magical train journeys in the world, with a narrative of a double escape, depicting an unlikely alliance of a French woman trying to leave her lover by travelling in the wrong direction, and a heartbreakingly young Russian draft dodger. It takes a great writer to manage all that so convincingly in one hundred and twenty thrilling pages.’– Vesna Goldsworthy, author of Iron Curtain; Published in France one year after Kerangal’s award-winning novel Birth of a Bridge, Eastbound breathes new life into the Russian literary archetype of the rebel soldier and revives the reality of disempowerment of the Soldiers’ Mothers of Saint Petersburg protest. Inspired by her observations on the ground as she travelled on the Trans-Siberian from Novossibirsk to Vladivostok as part of the French Ministry of Culture’s French-Russian programme in 2010, the novella developed from a radio piece written for France Culture.

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9781838490454

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Reviews

"‘Eastbound is a novella told in a single breath, quick as a light turned on; intense, precise, unconditional, potent. Jessica Moore’s translation is masterful.’ — Anne Michael; ‘As a choreographer knows, if you place a man and a woman on the stage even in an abstract ballet, you already have a story. As Maylis de Kerangal, one of the three or four best French novelists working today, reveals, the story need not be one of physical desire but of shared loneliness and the longing for escape—and of mammalian empathy’ — Edmund White; ‘Wonderfully immersive prose, relentlessly propulsive as the movement of a train but rhythmically dipping into and out of her characters’ perspective, worldview, psychology.' – Jonathan Gibbs, on Twitter; ‘The work of translation is revealed to be both poignant and practical – Hélène doesn’t share a language with Aliocha, either, and from the moment she introduces herself, with a palm on her sternum, they spend many hours working together through gestures. […] The journey takes place in the course of several days, but feels like one all-nighter: Aliocha, like Paula, of PAINTING TIME, is working against the clock. […] It takes immense skill, patience, and clarity to paint time, to render the melee of past and present, symbolic and real. Language may not be what allows us to see it, but in the right hands we can get close.’ - Lauren Oyler, The New Yorker; ‘'In Maylis de Kerangal's luminous vision, conveyed by the inspired translator Jessica Moore, Siberia's immensity dwarfs human perspective. The insecurity of existence across this vastness and on board the train emphasizes the significance of human connection. In a time of war, this connection may bring liberation and salvation.' - Ken Kalfus, New York Times; ‘The crisp, cascading sentences; the delicious mixture of fear and romance; the harmonious balance of story and language: these are characteristics of each of Ms. de Kerangal’s books, which spring from subjects as diverse as a heart transplant, the construction of a suspension bridge and the Lascaux cave paintings. “Eastbound,” being the shortest, is a fine entry point to her work, but any one will do. The important thing is to not deprive yourself of this first-rate author.’ – Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal; 'In this timely novella about a Russian military conscript defecting from the army, 20-year-old Aliocha is on the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to Vladivostok, spanning almost a quarter of the Earth's circumference. When he gets there he plans to ""hide, remake himself and earn enough to get back to the west"". But no literary train journey would be complete without encountering a stranger - in this case Helene, a Frenchwoman who has her own secrets. Through a combination of clothes swapping, psychological gameplay and simply hiding in a toilet, the two play cat and mouse with the senior Russian officer moving inexorably along the train. The result is a balance of internal thought and external action propelled by a narrative that races on in long sentences, keeping things flowing beautifully in between moments of drama.' - John Self, The Guardian best recent translated fiction; 'Using unadorned prose, de Kerangal repeatedly constructs anxious moments which defy any sense of inevitability or conclusion' - Declan O'Driscoll, Irish Times; 'As well as chiming with current world events, this is a very personal story of two lost souls, reluctantly but irresistibly drawn together [...] Their brief intimacy is beautifully rendered, a stark contrast to the violence of the world around them - a touch of humanity in a sea of brutality. And the story of Aliocha's escape is loaded with tension and suspense, to the point where it is almost like thriller.' - Paul Burke, Riveting Reviews, European Literature Network; ‘‘Eastbound is an antiwar story in which no bullets are fired and not a single battle is fought … The new English translation, by an insightful poet named Jessica Moore, would be worthwhile in any geopolitical climate. But in one shaped by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it’s tragically timely.’ - World Literature Today; ‘In mysterious, winding sentences gorgeously translated by Jessica Moore, De Kerangal gives us the story of two unlikely souls entwined in a quest for freedom with a striking sense of tenderness, sharply contrasting the brutality of the surrounding world.’ – Bookriot; ‘With each new novel, de Kerangal secures her place as a writer of stunning, incisive, enrapturing fiction; it’s a boon to have this sensuous, soulful, and suspenseful earlier work so gorgeously translated into English by Jessica Moore.’ – Booklist;‘‘[I]mpeccable novel. . . De Kerangal’s triumphant achievement is powered by mellifluous prose with a rhythm as steady as the train. Readers are in for a dazzling literary ride.’ - Publishers Weekly; 'The fever burning through this story, and its lyrical escapes don't curb its sensuality, and precision. [Kerangal's] language has an incredible driving force. It is both like a stone made up of many crystals, mixing registers with fluidity, and juxtaposing the poetic and the trivial. The whole thing has a unique rhythm, a sense of breathless speed: the sort of graceful rockslide that only she can pull off. In flux between interior and exterior, this is the perfect voyage.' - Le Monde des Livres; 'A flight that is as intoxicating as it is nerve-wracking, in which we grasp the doubts, the urgency and the secret bond between the two fugitives at lightning speed. We see how faces and landscapes dissolve in the non-place of the train, at once fixed and in perpetual motion.' - ELLE; 'With seismographic sensitivity, she enters the minds of her characters to capture their slightest emotional vibrations [...] In her pages we find both coarseness and flights of the soul, all evoked in tight, surgical prose which hides nothing and which holds reality strangely, at arm's length.' - La Croix; 'A fleeting, urgent tete-a-tete which explores the narrative possibilities of the machine in movement.' - Magazine Litteraire; 'Full of richness and life, the writing of the author of Birth of a Bridge continues to dilate, to seethe, propelling words through sentences that are organic and frantic like blood vessels. In a ballet of sidesteps, a man and a woman attempt to bring their aloneness together. Through an ardent game of attraction and evasion, Maylis de Kerangal records the seismic waves of every encounter, human or geographical.' - Telerama"

Author Information

Maylis de Kerangal spent her childhood in Le Havre, France, and now lives in Paris. Her novel Naissance d'un pont won the Prix Franz Hessel and Prix Medicis in 2010, and was published in English as Birth of a Bridge. In 2014, her fifth novel Reparer les vivants was published to wide acclaim in France, winning the Grand Prix RTL-Lire award and the student choice novel of the year from France Culture and Telerama. In the UK, Mend the Living was longlisted for the Booker International Prize in 2016, and won the Wellcome Book Prize in 2017 - only the second novel and the first work in translation ever to do so. It was also one of the Wall Street Journal's Ten Best Fiction Works of 2016. Un chemin de tables, translated as The Cook, was published in the UK and the US in 2019 and reviewed in the New York Times. Her 2018 novel Un monde a portee de main, published in English as Painting Time, was published in 2021 and was listed as one of the Guardian's most anticipated books of the year. Her short story collection Canoes is to be published in the UK by MacLehose Press.

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