Andreï Makine

Siberia, early seventies. The narrator, a thirteen-year-old orphan, saves Vardan, a young Armenian boy, from discrimination and being attacked by fellow Soviet students in their schoolyard. A friendship is born. When Vardan brings him home, the narrator enters a world of Armenian families living in the periphery of a prison where their husbands, sons, and fathers are detained. It is there, in the warmth of their home, that the narrator meets courage,...