SOURCE: Lottman, Herbert R. “From Russia—and France—with Love.” Publishers Weekly 244, no. 27 (7 July 1997): 18.

In the following review, Lottman describes Makine's career path and his rise to critical and popular success.

It's the stuff of romance—or maybe of grand opera: the Russian émigré in a drafty Montmartre garret, writing with gloves on until a benefactor lends him an electric heater, scribbling on his lap until an endtable is found for him. Then when Andrei Makine is ready to publish his fourth novel, Dreams of My Russian Summers (Arcade's English translation is out next month), he is put off by publishers and bawled out for his impatience, until late one night, Simone Gallimard phones to say she wants the book for the Gallimard subsidiary Mercure de France for a whopping ＄2000 advance, and a promised 3000-copy printing.

Then Parisian reviewers get a crack at it. While most of them...