[In the following review, Picone asserts that Makine “continues to earn the sky-high literary comparisons … thrust upon him.”]

Makine's latest novel [Requiem for a Lost Empire] is a terminal tour of the violent episodes endured by Russia in the twentieth century. A saga that spans three generations of Russian soldiers, Requiem maintains an epic feel through its sweeping variation of setting and character. The novel's narrator haunts Third World hotspots around the end of the cold war, reminiscing about his past as he plays at espionage for the homeland. Unable to make sense of the Soviet collapse, he examines his family history for an explanation, beginning with his grandfather, Nikolai. A deserter from the Red Army during the October Revolution, Nikolai sickens of killing and simply returns home, vainly seeking to escape the state-sponsored propaganda that will dog him and his descendents. The most memorable passages of the novel are those dedicated to Nikolai's son, Pavel, who fights as a soldier on the Eastern front in World War II. The cruelty of the Russian officers, who repeatedly send Pavel and his countrymen unarmed to meet the enemy, is equal to that of the German soldiers who wait to kill them. Makine's image of a paralyzed Russian soldier, unable to retreat or advance in battle for fear of being shot by the enemy or his own army, is a fitting metaphor for the inescapable violence of Russia's last century. Requiem for a Lost Empire contains a number of episodes in which one of the men seeks to protect a woman from violence. The lives of these degraded women, and the futile attempts to save them, resonate with the vision of Mother Russia, a pure, comforting dream that has been turned nightmarish by repeated violation. Despite the horrific subject matter, this is yet another profoundly humanistic novel from Makine, who continues to earn the sky-high literary comparisons (Proust, Balzac, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky) thrust upon him.