Description

By (author) Gary Romain; Translated by Mouillot Miranda Richmond

Short /annotation:
Romain Gary’s bittersweet final masterpiece is “epic and empathetic” (BBC) and “one of his best” (The New York Times)

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The Kites begins with a young boy, Ludo, coming of age on a small farm in Normandy under the care of his eccentric kite-making Uncle Ambrose. Ludo’s life changes the day he meets Lila, a girl from the aristocratic Polish family that owns the estate next door. In a single glance, Ludo falls in love forever; Lila, on the other hand, disappears back into the woods. And so begins Ludo’s adventure of longing, passion, and love for the elusive Lila, who begins to reciprocate his feelings just as Europe descends into World War II. After Germany invades Poland, Lila and her family go missing, and Ludo’s devotion to saving her from the Nazis becomes a journey to save his love, his loved ones, his country, and ultimately himself.

Filled with unforgettable characters who fling all they have into the fight to keep their hopes—and themselves—alive, The Kites is Romain Gary’s poetic call for resistance in whatever form it takes. A war hero himself, Gary embraced and fought for humanity in all its nuanced complexities, in the belief that a hero might be anyone who has the courage to love and hope.

Review quote:
“Epic and empathetic.”

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“The Kites is indeed a treasure, capable of accessing an enormous node of insight and almost-overwhelming beauty spliced with bittersweet candor. For Gary the novelist, it is not only love and fellow-feeling that unites us, but “the expression of suffering.” Perhaps it took the suffering that claimed Gary’s life for him to write as expansive a work of devout humanism as The Kites. Whatever the case, we are lucky to have it at last. We’re going to need it.”

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“Hero of the French Resistance, diplomat, and two-time recipient of the Prix Goncourt under two different pen names, Gary examines the fates of young love, naiveté, and idealism in his final novel, set in France during World War II and being published in English for the first time…A rich and layered love story that begins in innocence and moves through hardship toward a broad humanity.”

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“Unbelievably, two-time Prix Goncourt winner Gary’s luminous last work is only now appearing in English, but it was worth the wait… Gary uses limpid, accessible language (deftly translated) to deliver certain truths: memory can ground us or blind us; imagination, perhaps even a bit of craziness, is essential for survival; and we cannot easily be divided into heroes and villains. Smart and wonderfully life-affirming.”

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“A vivid text and a great saga about the innate dignity of love that avoids the twofold temptation of sentimentality and moral lessons.”

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“Gary handles the emotional tightrope of espionage and the brutal reality of battle with clarity and precision, all captured magnificently by Mouillot’s translation…This is a wonderful translation of a French classic.”

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“Blissful: in Gary’s hands, fiction itself is a form of resistance.”

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“Just before he killed himself, Gary published his last novel — and one of his best — “The Kites,” which has never before appeared in English but has now been given a stylish translation by Miranda Richmond Mouillot.”

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“Among Gary’s most accomplished works. Gary is in favor of significant moral action and against sanctimonious moral fervor. A fabulist in many small ways, he was in possession of one big compound truth: to believe that the human and the humane are naturally the same is one of the worst lies we tell ourselves; to think that they might yet become so is one of the bette