'Richly atmospheric and full of suspense, Eastbound combines a vibrant account of one of the most magical train journeys in the world, with a narrative of a double escape, depicting an unlikely alliance of a French woman trying to leave her lover by travelling in the wrong direction, and a heartbreakingly young Russian draft dodger. It takes a great writer to manage all that so convincingly in one hundred and twenty thrilling pages. - Vesna Goldsworthy, author of Iron Curtain; 'In Maylis de Kerangal's luminous vision, conveyed by the inspired translator Jessica Moore, Siberia's immensity dwarfs human perspective. The insecurity of existence across this vastness and on board the train emphasizes the significance of human connection. In a time of war, this connection may bring liberation and salvation.' - Ken Kalfus, New York Times; 'In this timely novella about a Russian military conscript defecting from the army, 20-year-old Aliocha is on the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to Vladivostok, spanning almost a quarter of the Earth's circumference. When he gets there he plans to hide, remake himself and earn enough to get back to the west. But no literary train journey would be complete without encountering a stranger - in this case Helene, a Frenchwoman who has her own secrets. Through a combination of clothes swapping, psychological gameplay and simply hiding in a toilet, the two play cat and mouse with the senior Russian officer moving inexorably along the train. The result is a balance of internal thought and external action propelled by a narrative that races on in long sentences, keeping things flowing beautifully in between moments of drama.' - John Self, The Guardian best recent translated fiction; 'Using unadorned prose, de Kerangal repeatedly constructs anxious moments which defy any sense of inevitability or conclusion' - Declan O'Driscoll, Irish Times; 'As well as chiming with current world events, this is a very personal story of two lost souls, reluctantly but irresistibly drawn together [...] Their brief intimacy is beautifully rendered, a stark contrast to the violence of the world around them - a touch of humanity in a sea of brutality. And the story of Aliocha's escape is loaded with tension and suspense, to the point where it is almost like thriller.' - Paul Burke, Riveting Reviews, European Literature Network; 'The fever burning through this story, and its lyrical escapes don't curb its sensuality, and precision. [Kerangal's] language has an incredible driving force. It is both like a stone made up of many crystals, mixing registers with fluidity, and juxtaposing the poetic and the trivial. The whole thing has a unique rhythm, a sense of breathless speed: the sort of graceful rockslide that only she can pull off. In flux between interior and exterior, this is the perfect voyage.' - Le Monde des Livres; 'A flight that is as intoxicating as it is nerve-wracking, in which we grasp the doubts, the urgency and the secret bond between the two fugitives at lightning speed. We see how faces and landscapes dissolve in the non-place of the train, at once fixed and in perpetual motion.' - ELLE; 'With seismographic sensitivity, she enters the minds of her characters to capture their slightest emotional vibrations [...] In her pages we find both coarseness and flights of the soul, all evoked in tight, surgical prose which hides nothing and which holds reality strangely, at arm's length.' - La Croix; 'A fleeting, urgent tete-a-tete which explores the narrative possibilities of the machine in movement.' - Magazine Litteraire; 'Full of richness and life, the writing of the author of Birth of a Bridge continues to dilate, to seethe, propelling words through sentences that are organic and frantic like blood vessels. In a ballet of sidesteps, a man and a woman attempt to bring their aloneness together. Through an ardent game of attraction and evasion, Maylis de Kerangal records the seismic waves of every encounter, human or geographical.' - Telerama
