As a child, Elias Almeida loses both his parents during the Angolan uprising against colonial rule. As an adult and professional revolutionary, he bears witness to mankind at its pitiless worst. Yet he continues to believe in a better world and in the redeeming power of love -- even though he cannot be with the woman he loves, who rescued him from thugs one snowy night on the streets of Moscow. Spanning forty years of Africa's past as a battleground between East and West, this powerful novel explores the heights and depths of human nature as it tells a profoundly affecting story of sacrifice and idealism.

A powerful meditation on the price of ideology and the nature of love . . . The novel, remorseless in its depiction of man's inhumanity, is poetically alive to the redeeming power of love. * Eithne Farry, Daily Mail *
A beautiful, haunting fugue that carries the weight of decades of suffering on a continent that the West prefers to romanticise or ignore . . . [Makine's] reputation as one of the significant novelists of our age is only strengthened by this book. * Stephanie Merritt, Observer *
Andreï Makine has exceptional gifts for getting to the heart of true feeling . . . HUMAN LOVE is a haunting, often very tender story written in a kind of meditative fury . . . one of the best novels about Africa in a long time * Christopher Hope, Guardian *
All his books are wonderful . . . But HUMAN LOVE, full of feeling, wisdom and tenderness amidst horror, is one of his best. If you ever despair of modern literature, read Makine. * Allan Massie, Scotsman *
Makine looks reality in the face and yet retains a belief in beauty and the transforming power of love * Allan Massie chooses his book of 2008 for the Spectator *
Wonderful . . . his work is exhilarating * Alan Massie choses HUMAN LOVE for The Scotsman Christmas Books *

Andreï Makine was born in Krasnoyarsk in Siberia in 1957, but sought asylum in France in 1987. While initially sleeping rough in Paris he was writing his first novel, A HERO'S DAUGHTER, which was eventually published in 1990 after Makine pretended it had been translated from the Russian, since no publisher believed he could have written it in French. With his third novel, ONCE UPON A RIVER LOVE, he was finally published as a 'French' writer, and with his fourth, LE TESTAMENT FRANCAIS, he became the first author to win both of France's top literary prizes, the Prix Goncourt and Prix Médicis. Since then Andreï Makine has written THE CRIME OF OLGA ARBYELINA, REQUIEM FOR THE EAST, A LIFE'S MUSIC, which won the Grand Prix RTL-Lire, THE EARTH AND SKY OF JACQUES DORME, THE WOMAN WHO WAITED, HUMAN LOVE and THE LIFE OF AN UNKNOWN MAN.