SOURCE: Jones, Tobin H. Review of Confession d'un porte-drapeau déchu, by Andreï Makine. French Review 71, no. 4 (March 1998): 677-78.

In the following review, Jones discusses Confession d'un porte-drapeau déchu.

The story of how Russian-born Andreï Makine published his second novel, Confession d'un porte-drapeau déchu, now seems apocryphal. Unlike his first novel, La fille d'un héros de l'Union soviétique (1990), which he composed in Russian and had translated, Makine wrote this novel in French. Finding it possible to place only as a translation, he provided Belfond with a Russian “original” he translated from his composition in French. In 1996, after the recognition of the Goncourt and Médicis prizes for his 1995 Le testament français, Confession d'un porte-drapeau déchu was reprinted under Makine's name as the author of the French version. Whether true or not, this story, now told by Belfond as well as by the...