Books: The Blumkin Project, Heritage Two New Titles from Other Press
- Details
- Category: Books
- Published on Thursday, 03 November 2022 07:55
- Written by A&E Contributing Editor
The Blumkin Project and Heritage, recently released from Other Press Publishing, each tell the stories of passion journeys as the authors conquer insurmountable circumstances fueled by desire for a better life for themselves and their families.
The Blumkin Project: A Biographical Novel, writer and researcher Christian Salmon looks to his own background as a would-be Bolshevik in 1980s Paris to recount the epic story of Yakov Blumkin, a revolutionary figure from the early twentieth century.
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Drawing on the conventions of both autofiction and biography, The Blumkin Project illustrates the life and times of an elusive legend of the October Revolution. Told with the rapid pace of a spy novel, it will appeal to fans of John le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and the TV series The Americans.
Using a trunk containing Bolshevik paraphernalia and literature as a framing device, Salmon invites readers to travel back to Eastern Europe at the turn of the century and investigate the enduring mystery and legacy of Yakov Blumkin.
Born in Ukraine to an impoverished Jewish family and orphaned at a young age, Blumkin was alleged to have had nine lives. From socialist revolutionary to avant-garde poet to assassin of the German ambassador Wilhelm von Mirbach, he bore many titles and identities over the course of his short life. Although Blumkin's exact birthdate is unknown and subject to debate, it's estimated he lived from 1900 to 1929, when he was executed under orders from Stalin.
With the aid of manuscripts, documents, rare photographs, and personal souvenirs, Salmon paints a compelling portrait of Blumkin, and more broadly, of the October Revolution. Necessary reading for scholars of Russian history and anyone interested in learning more about a once-forgotten figure, The Blumkin Project is a thrilling endeavor from start to finish.
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About the author: Christian Salmon is a writer and researcher at France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). He founded and was a member of the International Writers' Parliament from 1993 to 2003. He is the author of several books, including Verbicide, Devenir minoritaire: Pour une nouvelle politique de la littérature (coauthored with Joseph Hanimann), and Tombeau de la fiction.
About the translator: William Rodarmor has translated some forty-five books and screenplays in genres ranging from literary fiction to espionage and fantasy. In 2017 he won the Northern California Book Award for fiction translation for The Slow Waltz of Turtles by Katherine Pancol. His recent translations include And Their Children After Them by Nicolas Mathieu (2020) and Article 353 by Tanguy Viel (2019).
Title: The Blumkin Project.
Release Date: September 27, 2022.
Pages: 336.
Size: 6x9 in.
Binding: Paperback.
ISBN: 978-1-59051-154-1
Genre: Biographical.
MSRP: $17.99.
Heritage - A Compelling Journey of Love, Life and Wine
Heritage, a novel, brings to the pages a romantic journey of wine making in the Chilean countryside, with grit, and a determination to change his life, and his family, he preserves through nature's rejection until his single vine grows.
Heritage: A Novel by award-winning French author Miguel Bonnefoy is a multigenerational saga infused with elements of magical realism.
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Told in the vein of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude and Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits, with the historic scope of Maggie Shipstead's Great Circle, HERITAGE tells the story of the Lonsoniers, a family that emigrates in the late 19th century from France's Jura region to the Americas in the wake of a blighted grape crop.
Landing in Santiago, Chile, and possessing a single grape vine and little else, the Lonsonier patriarch makes a new life for himself that will have a rippling effect on generations to come. His son, Lazare, fights for the French in World War I, but is forced to betray an old friend in the heat of the trenches. Returning home wounded in body and soul, he is revived by his love for a fellow Franco-Chilean, the enchanting Thérèse, who has a special affinity with birds.
They marry and construct an ornate aviary that later inspires their daughter, Margot, to become a pilot at a time when only the most daring women took to the skies. Margot in turn raises her son, Ilario Da, at the Lonsonier manse, where she watches him grow into a bold revolutionary. Intersecting these characters' lives are chance encounters with figures including a kindly but mysterious Mapuche healer; the ghost of a soldier; the descendants of a Ukrainian rabbinic dynasty; and a beloved trumpet player.
At once epic and intimate, Heritage spans the course of nearly a hundred years, brilliantly weaving major historical events, from the World Wars to the dictatorship of Chilean general Augusto Pinochet, with traces of the supernatural. Through writing that shimmers with poetic language and a vivid sense of place, Bonnefoy has crafted an exquisite tale of longing—for a lost homeland, for solace in precarious times, for moral certitude—and belonging that resonates in our own uncertain epoch.
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Title: Heritage.
Release Date: May 31, 2022.
Pages: 149.
Size: 5x8 in.
Binding: Paperback.
ISBN: 978-1-63542-182-8.
Genre: Fiction.
MSRP: $15.99.