Simon Baker

The travels of an idealist

Simon Baker reviews Andreï Makine’s latest novel

issue 14 June 2008

Simon Baker reviews Andreï Makine’s latest novel

In Andreï Makine’s previous novel, The Woman Who Waited (2006), which is set in 1970s USSR, the unnamed narrator sees through his peers’ weak ideologies; he knows that their anti- establishment stance is merely a neat justification for a life of indolence. In Human Love, Elias Almeida, a communist revolutionary, sees that many of his well-to-do comrades use their political activism as a means of escape or as preparatory research in a writing career; theirs is ‘the arrogant desire to transform other people’s lives into an “experiment”, into a testing ground for their own ideas’. Each main character seeks out real humans rather than a theoretical ‘humanity’, and both fall for women they hardly know.

The novels have similar starting-points, therefore, but while Makine’s previous protagonist stays in a small town and becomes disillusioned, Elias travels from country to country and, despite his scepticism, remains committed to the ideal of a world in which people do not kill, rape or tyrannise.

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