Maylis De Kerangal - Eastbound [Translated by Jessica Moore] (2023)
"Jessica Moore’s new translation of Maylis de Kerangal’s novella Eastbound is a hybrid of Joseph Conrad’s
novella Heart of Darkness and Richard Linklater’s film Before Sunrise. It features two characters, at first total
strangers to each other, one a man—named Aliocha—and one a woman—named Héléne—on a train heading east into territory
that is for both of them unknown. Like both of those earlier works, Eastbound uses this setup to unspool a profound
tale of identity, maturation and how humans relate to one another... The English translation of Eastbound features
evocative, descriptive prose that constructs the world of Aliocha and Héléne in brilliant detail without slowing the
relentless momentum of the story. In particular, textures and geography, including Russia’s famed Lake Baikal (which
contains nearly one-quarter of all the freshwater on Earth), come to life just as surely as the inner worlds of the
co-protagonists."
~ By Ryne Clos - spectrumculture.com and
Kobo Books