FICTION makes it seem easy to explore another life, as the young film-maker Oleg Erdmann attempts to do in Andrei Makine’s latest and characteristically challenging novel. 

Where I Left My Soul

ANDREÏ MAKINE’S 11th novel is really two separate stories: one the tale of an emigré Russian author named Ivan Shutov, the other the titular life of an unknown man, Georgy Volsky, a wheelchair-bound occupant of a small room in a St Petersburg communal flat.

Natacha Appanah