Andreï Makine was born and brought up in Russia, but A Woman Loved, like his other novels, was written in French. The book is set mainly in Russia (but also in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy). The author employs some Russian words in the French text, which I have retained in this English translation. These include shapka (a fur hat or cap, often with earflaps), izba (a traditional wooden house built of logs), kolkhoznik (a worker on a collective farm in the former Soviet Union), Politburo (the principal policy-making committee of the Soviet Communist Party), gulag (the system of Soviet corrective labor camps, of which the Kolyma complex was the most notorious), apparatchik (a member of the Soviet Communist Party administration, or apparat), and dacha (a country house or cottage, typically used as a second or vacation home).
The historical references in the text include the famous Nevsky Prospekt, one of the main streets in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), which lies on the river Neva; Peterhof, the palace and park, with commanding views of the Baltic, built by Peter the Great in 1723 on the outskirts of St. Petersburg; and “Potemkin villages,” sham villages reputedly built for Catherine the Great’s tour of the Crimea in 1787 on the orders of her chief minister, Prince Grigory Potemkin.
I am indebted to many people, and to the author in particular, for advice, assistance, and encouragement during the preparation of this translation. To all of them my thanks are due, notably to Jennifer Anderson, Thompson Bradley, Edward Braun, Mary Byers, June Elks, Scott Grant, Martyn Haxworth, Wayne Holloway, Barbara Hughes, Russell Ingham, Ann Mansbridge, Damian Nussbaum, Geoffrey Pogson, Pierre Sciama, Simon Strachan, Susan Strachan, and John Weeks, and my editor at Graywolf Press, Katie Dublinski.
GS