De Kerangal’s lush prose captures a few days in the lives of two refugees fleeing something about Russia they can neither articulate nor abide: Helene, who has seen her Muscovite boyfriend converted by the promise of a new job into a Putin-believer, and Aliocha, a new Army conscript on his way to somewhere in Siberia. The two are thrown together on the Trans-Siberian Railway and rescue one another from fates they never chose. The author manages to limn the beauty of the wild landscape while hinting at the cruelty and despoliation wrought by humans; perhaps Helene and Aliocha can choose a different path. To Helene, “this young soldier also embodies the entire country, he’s an archive of all the Russian wars—‘the homeland our mother, the war our stepmother,’” as her lover Anton had told her (62). By the end of the journey, however, the two have become so alike, you can hope for some sort of redemption from history.