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Eastbound

by Maylis De Kerangal

Narrator Jennifer Pickens

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Translator Jessica Moore

Length 2 hours 23 minutes

Language English

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Bookseller recommendation

“Aliocha, a young conscript of the Russian army who decides his best hope is to desert, encounters Helene, a French woman traveling on her own, on the trans-Siberian railway. Helene is also a deserter of sorts, having just left her relationship with a Russian man. Without any shared language, Helene understands Aliocha’s situation. Suspense builds as his brutal battalion leader discovers his absence. Maylis de Kerangal’s vision of Siberia, its appearance and its atmosphere, and her description of the train and the other passengers paint vivid pictures that have stayed with me. It feels as though this story could take place at any time, and I often found myself picturing the twentieth century only to be reminded that it is a contemporary one. I would recommend this to anyone who has enjoyed Claire Keegan's novellas. ”
— Amy • A Great Good Place for Books

Summary

In this gripping tale, a Russian conscript and a French woman cross paths on the Trans-Siberian railroad, each fleeing to the east for their own reasons

Eastbound is 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, Hélène, for whom he feels an uncanny trust.

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