He's the best kind of writer, not just a bestseller but a man who is not afraid to leave the comfort zone of his desk, go out into the world, take risks, and get his shoes dirty ... His non-fiction novel, Limonov, has two explicit modes - part adventure story, part cultural-historical analysis ... it is about Carrere's exploration of himself, his Russian heritage, and what it means to be a European after the second world war, especially since the end of the cold war -- Robert McCrum * Observer *
To risk a rather devalued word, stunning -- John Updike * The New Yorker *
A beguiling writer . . . Graceful and important -- John Freeman * NPR *
Russia, they say, cannot be understood with the mind alone, and neither can her looniest son to date, Edichka Limonov. It also takes a heart, a spleen, a liver and this beautiful book by France's greatest writer, Emmanuel Carrere. Get ready for the last real adventure of the 20th Century! -- Gary Shteyngart (author of Little Failure)
In this lucid, rigorous, deeply researched novelistic biography, Carrere reveals a multifaceted, unconventional, and fascinating anti-hero to the reader ... Limonov is as much a mystery as Russia itself, that complex, violent, desperate country that Carrere reconstructs in a powerful historical sketch -- Bendetta Marietti * La Repubblica *
With Limonov, Emmanuel Carrere abandons fiction without giving up on magic ... The author is present as narrator, and so Emmanuel Carrere himself becomes a character in this book. It was the American Tom Wolfe, at the beginning of the sixties, who coined the term 'new journalism' for methods not altogether new. With In Cold Blood, Truman Capote proved himself a master of the genre. And Emmanuel Carrere's Limonov proves he is too. You read this all in one breath -- Bernardo Valli * La Repubblica *
Carrere covers a lot of ground with cool honesty and careful humanity -- Sally Singer * The New York Times (A Favorite Book of the Year) *
An experimental combination: part politico-historical exegesis of half a century - and more - of Russian history, part modern and compelling adventure novel. Limonov is the portrait of a Soviet, then Russian, man at once exceptional and deplorable; it's the story of some potential outcomes in the clash between history and the individual, of the effects that a century of totalitarian ideals have wrought on the human body ... Carrere doesn't hide even before the most troubling episodes ... he suspends judgment, takes a step back, begins again. We want to understand, with him, now that we're reading this faithful and precise account of one of Russia's dissident delinquents of the recent past, what these lives that are not our own are like -- Michele de Mieri * Il sole 24 ore *
There are few great writers in France today, and Emmanuel Carrere is one of them * Paris Review *
This is an extraordinary, fantastic book about an extraordinary, fantastic life. It's billed as a novel, can be read as a novel and would be a good novel if Eduard Limonov had never existed. But he does . . . you will learn an awful lot about Russia now and in the days of the Soviets -- Allan Massie * The Scotsman *
You might not have heard of [Limonov], and after you have read this you might wish you had not heard of him, but you will certainly have enjoyed reading about his life, thanks to the verve of Emmanuel Carrere's exhilarating narration. You will probably also understand considerably more about the country that produced such a narcissistic and controversial figure, whom the author finds alluring and repellent in equal measure . . . Carrere has seized on Limonov's projection of himself as a literary hero (or anti-hero) straight out of the pages of Dostoyevsky, Celine, or Henry Miller, and run with it -- Rosamund Bartlett * Independent *
It's rare to find a book so original in form (is it a novel? is it a biography?) and at the same time so compelling in content. A fascinating portrait, not just of a memorably grotesque, larger-than-life character, but of Russia itself -- Jonathan Coe * English PEN *
I would eagerly recommend . . . John Lambert's seamless rendition of Emmanuelle Carrere's rollicking biographical novel Limonov -- Boris Dralyuk * English PEN *
At last we have a translation that brings out the wild humour and vitality of the original -- Robert Chandler * English PEN *
