Andreï Makine "The Woman Who Waited" (Sceptre)
At the risk of appearing too abstract, I feel like I want to compare this small novel to a piece of music, with two distinct movements - melancholic ruminations of an ex-dissident of a crumbled Soviet empire and puzzlement over a woman's unending wait for a soldier who is not coming back. And though the movements repeat themselves in different forms, they never actually feel "repetitive". The merciless, self-deprecating frankness of the protagonist, the culmination of the story that is so unexpected and predictable at the same time... A very good read.
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