Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme

With this novel, Andreï Makine, whose work has been compared to that of Balzac, Chekhov, Pasternak, and Proust, brings to a stunning conclusion his epic trilogy that began with Dreams of My Russian Summers and continued with Requiem for a Lost Empire.

The novel opens in 1942, in a burning, gutted Stalingrad, where the German and Russian armies are locked in a struggle to the death. Amid these ruins...