Limonov: A Novel

Product Description

'Limonov is not a fictional character. There. I know him. He was a rogue in Ukraine; an idol of the Soviet underground under Brezhnev; a bum, then a multimillionaire's valet in Manhattan; a fashionable writer in Paris; a lost soldier in the Balkan wars; and now, in the chaotic ruins of postcommunist Russia, the elderly but charismatic leader of a party of young desperados. He sees himself as a hero; you might call him a scumbag: I suspend my judgment on the matter. It's a dangerous life, an ambiguous life: a real adventure novel. It is also, I believe, a life that says something. Not just about him, Limonov, not just about Russia, but about all our history since the end of World War II.'

The crazed, reckless life of Eduard Limonov is like a novel: compelling, black, wild, bitter, surprising. In this extraordinary work the charismatic novelist, journalist, screenwriter and filmmaker Emmanuel Carrère takes us into the dark heart of a character who, whether drugged on New York streets after taking a beating by a mob boss, getting dragged into grotesque Parisian salons, enlisting in the army or being imprisoned in a labour camp, is sometimes poignant, sometimes repulsive, sometimes a bastard, sometimes even endearing. But who is never, ever mediocre.

From arguably France's greatest living writer, Limonov is that very rare thing: a great true story, one that explores the intersection of individual psychology and wider politics. Richly overflowing with both insight and incident, it peels back history to show us society through the astonishing life of one individual.

'To paraphrase Calvino, Emmanuel Carrèrre's Limonov is a book about two things: Limonov, and everything else. Equal parts The Quest for Corvo and Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, this virtuosically unclassifiable thing is somehow at once the liveliest of novels, the most illuminating of biographies, and the most consequential of philosophical inquiries - a loopy, hilarious, gut-punching quest after the shifting spirits of war, loyalty, discipline, pity, empathy, scorn, vitality, honor, ego, and, above all, the heroism of decency. All of it ripples outward from one unusual question: what might it mean to try to love someone who was convinced he only wanted to be feared?' Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of A Sense of Direction

'Russia, they say, cannot be understood with the mind alone, and neither can her looniest son to date, Edichka Limonov. It also takes a heart, a spleen, a liver and this beautiful book by France's greatest writer, Emmanuel Carrère. Get ready for the last real adventure of the 20th Century!' Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure