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Eastbound

Written by: Maylis De Kerangal, Jessica Moore - translator
Narrated by: Jennifer Pickens
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Publisher's 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, Helene, 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 Helene must decipher—for her help to hide him. They hurry from the filth of his third-class carriage to Helene's first-class sleeping car. Aliocha now a hunted deserter and Helene his accomplice with her own inner landscape of recent memories to contend with.

©2023 Maylis de Kerangal; English Translation Copyright 2023 by Jessica Moore (P)2023 Tantor

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