EBENEZERBreaking
The author of The Adversary and Yoga unearths a history that includes the Nazis, Russia, and the Académie Française
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Books — Blake Morrison
When Emmanuel Carrère’s mother, Hélène, died in 2023, at the age of 94, President Macron spoke at her memorial. She had been “perpetual secretary” of the Académie Française, in effect its head, and 200 people gathered at Les Invalides in Paris to pay tribute. Emmanuel’s father, Louis, was there too, in a wheelchair, only half aware of what was going on. This 400-page memoir, translated into English by John Lambert, is a homage to both parents and the unlikely history that brought them together. It’s also an act of reparation towards Hélène, whom Emmanuel worshipped as a child but upset as an adult by publishing a book that she’d forbidden him to write.
Hélène grew up in stateless poverty in Paris, the daughter of Georges Zourabichvili, whose parents had fled Georgia in 1921, and Nathalie von Pelken, who as a child had six governesses, one for each day excluding Sunday. Though “the magical world of the fallen Russian aristocracy” was the backdrop, conditions were tough, not least after Georges disappeared in 1944, murdered by partisans for alleged Nazi collaboration. Hélène was 15 at the time and unsuccessfully tried to hide the truth about George’s death from her younger brother, Nicolas.
Carrère’s mother wouldn’t have slept well if she’d known this book was coming
She was determined and highly ambitious. What she couldn’t excel at, she didn’t do. For a time she considered an acting career but found her metier as a Russian historian. It helped that she was charming and attractive, so much so that an Afghan pilot, on a flight from Tashkent to Paris via Tehran, first invited her to the cockpit, then landed the plane in Kabul in order to kidnap her. He kept her there for four days before a couple of US aid workers sneaked her away on a private plane.
By then she was married to Louis, who worked for an insurance company and was often away on business trips. At home Hélène ruled the roost and let Emmanuel and his two sisters sleep around her bed, a setup she called “kolkhoz”, the name for collective farms in the USSR. There was no television or radio; the children were made to read. Her son’s reading was strenuous: from Jules Verne and Alexander Dumas, he moved on to Dostoevsky at 13. His mother brought out his softer side – whenever she went away he’d write long letters saying how “horribly” he missed her.
He felt abandoned when she began receiving phone calls from a “Mr N” and had long furtive conversations with him. No less distraught, her husband threatened to kill himself. Hélène ended the affair to spare Louis but he “lost her love for ever” and moved from the marriage bed to a tiny room. Worse, she more or less stopped speaking to him, a habit that lasted to the end. When diagnosed with cancer and admitted to a palliative care home, she merely told him she’d be away at a conference.
The mother-son relationship remained close until Emmanuel published A Russian Novel, which explored the story of her father, Georges, which she had asked him not to tell (“It’s my story, not yours. Leave him where he is”). Publication was “a family cataclysm”; she blamed her brother Nicolas for helping with it. Though she did eventually forgive Emmanuel, her loyalty to Russia divided them. A week before the invasion of Ukraine she described Putin as “a rational man”, committed to good relations with Europe. Dismayed, Emmanuel visited Georgia, where his cousin Salome Zourabichvili had become president. A trip to Ukraine followed. He remains violently opposed to Putin.
What’s attractive about the book is its intimacy. If Hélène is a grand dame, her son enjoys the role of bon vivant, disclosing his drinking bouts, journalistic forays, failed relationships and blissful third marriage as well as his bipolar disorder. He’d like to write with “filial piety” and both his father’s genealogical research and his uncle Nicolas’s memoirs help him fill out the family story. But he also lets us in on his uncertainties as he proceeds: “what I’m hoping for is the unhoped for. We’ll see.”
His mother loved order and completeness. And at her memorial Macron praised her for finishing the latest Académie dictionary – a 40-year task – with the word zygomatique (an anatomical term). In reality, as she frustratedly told her son, they’d only reached zoo, with 62 more words to come, the last of them zz, onomatopoeia for sleep. She wouldn’t have slept well if she’d known this book was coming, but it’s an epic achievement and an honest, heartfelt account.
• Kolkhoz by Emmanuel Carrère is published by Fern (£20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.
Hélène grew up in stateless poverty in Paris, the daughter of Georges Zourabichvili, whose parents had fled Georgia in 1921, and Nathalie von Pelken, who as a child had six governesses, one for each day excluding Sunday. Though “the magical world of the fallen Russian aristocracy” was the backdrop, conditions were tough, not least after Georges disappeared in 1944, murdered by partisans for alleged Nazi collaboration. Hélène was 15 at the time and unsuccessfully tried to hide the truth about George’s death from her younger brother, Nicolas.
This report is published with credit to The Guardian. Full available text from the wire is above. Read on The Guardian →
Source: The Guardian · Blake Morrison. Published 27 Aug 2026, 06:00 am.
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