Kolia

Kolia was born in the K. mountains of eastern Siberia and grew up in Stalin's prisons. There, still an illiterate child getting used to hunger and cold, he meets Iossif, a prisoner from Western Europe who takes care of him and gives him a taste for art, for French and for the free world. Released from the camps at the end of his adolescence, Kolia discovers the Soviet Union of the 1950s, soon joins a circus in Moscow and becomes a clown. But the memory of Iossif, who vanished in unknown circumstances, haunts him, like the whole past written on his face and covered by the whiteness of the silent clown.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

184 pages in the original

Genres

Historical, Politics (assigned by AI)

Set in

Russia, 1950s

First published

2010 by Le Quartanier

Author's age

30 when first published

ISBN

9782923400716 (original)

9781770892194 (House of Anansi Press, Canada)

More

Wikidata