The Earth And Sky Of Jacques Dorme

Translator's Note

Andrei' Makine was born and raised in Russia, but like his other novels, The Earth and Sky of Jacques Dorme was written in French. The book is set in Russia and France, and I have kept some of the Russian words the author uses in the French text in this translation. These include shapka (a fur hat or cap, often with earflaps); izba (a traditional wooden house built of logs); and taiga (the virgin pine forest that spreads across Siberia south of the tundra).

The text contains a number of references to Russian historical figures, including Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin, Catherine the Great's administrator for newly acquired lands in the south, who reputedly gave orders for sham villages to be built for her tour in 1787, and Mikhail Harionovich Kutuzov, commander in chief of the Russian forces at Borodino in 1812. There are also a number of references to institutions from the Communist era in Russia. A kolkhoz was a collective farm. The Pioneers were junior members of the Young Communist youth movement. The GPU (later OGPU) was the agency for investigating and combating counterrevolutionary activities in the USSR from 1922 to 1934. The NKVD, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, were the police charged with maintaining political control during the years of Stalin's purges from 1934 to 1946.

References to French history include allusion to the new calendar established in the early years of the French Revolution, starting with Year I in 1793. Ventôse, one of the newly named months, corresponded to late February and early March. Year II was one of many political executions, as the Terror continued.