Eastboundis both an adventure story and a duet of two vibrant inner worlds.

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.

Racing toward Vladivostok, we meet the young Aliocha, packed onto a Trans-Siberian train with other Russian conscripts. Soon after boarding, he decides to desert and over a midnight smoke in a dark corridor of the train, he encounters an older French woman, Hlne, for whom he feels an uncanny trust.

A complicity quickly grows between the two when he manages to urgently askthrough a pantomime and basic Russian that Hlne must decipherfor her help to hide him. They hurry from the filth of his third-class carriage to Hlnes first-class sleeping car. Aliocha now a hunted deserter and Hlne his accomplice with her own inner landscape of recent memories to contend with.

Format: Paperback
Published: USA, 2016
Publisher: Archipelago Books
Pages: 128
Language: EnglishISBN 13: 9781953861504

ISBN 10: 1953861504