Human Love

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

Andrei’ Makine was born and brought up in Russia, but Human Love, like his other novels, was written in French. The action takes place in various parts of the world, including several African countries, Russia, and elsewhere. The author includes in the French text a number of Russian words, which I have retained in this English translation. These include shapka (a fur hat or cap, often with ear flaps), izba (a traditional wooden house built of logs), taiga (the virgin pine forest that spreads across Siberia south of the tundra), kolkhoznik (a member of a collective farm in the USSR), and apparatchik (a member of the party administration, or apparat). Other Russian references include Nevsky Prospekt, the famous street in Saint Petersburg (Leningrad under the Soviet Union), and the battle of Borodino, a pyrrhic victory for Napoleon’s forces as they advanced on Moscow in 1812.

References to life in Angola under Portuguese colonial rule include contratados (men forced into “contracted” labor) and assimilados (native Angolans granted a degree of civic status). In postindependence Angola the MPLA (Movi-mento Popular de Libertaçao de Angola, or Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) formed the first government and was opposed by UNITA (Uniäo Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola, or National Union for the Liberation of Angola) for many years. Patrice Lumumba was one of the founders of the Mouvement National Congolais under Belgian rule. He became the prime minister of the newly independent republic of Congo in 1960, opposed the secession of Katanga, and was arrested by his own army and murdered. A number of African cities and towns are named in the text, including Luanda, Dondo, Cabinda, Lucapa, and Mavinga, Angola; Kinshasa, Zaire; Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo; Lusaka, Zambia; Maputo, Mozambique; Mogadishu, Somalia; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; and Conakry, Guinea.

French political references include the nickname fasionaria for a militant female revolutionary, and the OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète), the French terrorist organization that opposed Algerian independence.

G. S.