The Crime of Olga Arbyelina - Tapa blanda

'Beautifully observed and lyrically expressed, the novel slowly ... A tragic story of misplaced erotic love' -- The Times 'Though his blend of memory and imagination has won him comparison with Proust, his broad sweep and mystical vision, his emotional intensity and lyrical elan ... belong to the tradition of nineteenth-century Russian novelists' -- Independent 'Intriguing ... meticulous, lyrical prose ... he charges space with tension and the inanimate with meaning ... Makine deserves our full attention' -- The Sunday Times 'An elaborately haunting work ...Olga's involuted, tormented conciousness becomes a sophisticated pleasure in its own right ... Makine's novel possesses the feverish beauty of a hot-house culture in its final efflorescence' -- Publishers Weekly Structured like a crime novel, but told in the language of a poet... It's a thrilling book, lit with the soft light of despair, withpassages which should shock but whose style caresses, melting this scandalous story into a captivating melody. The readers of "Le Testament Francais" will rediscover in "Olga Arbelina's crime" Andrei Makine's beautiful and supple writing, his relish for the waking dream.' -- FIGARO LITTERAIRE

Olga Arbyelina, a White Russian princess living quietly with her adolescent son in a small French town, is a relative newcomer to the Russian community there. Intriguingly little is known about her when, in the summer of 1947, she is suspected of murdering a fellow emigre, only for the case to be dropped. As the story of the preceding year unfolds, a picture forms of her upbringing in Russia followed by her exile and marriage in France, and the details of a darker, hidden crime begin to emerge, encircling the narrative in an ever-tightening snare.