Aliocha

Synopsis of Aliocha

The son of white Russian immigrants, Aliocha feels different from the other students at his school. He stigmatizes everything his parents represent: their financial difficulties and their visceral attachment to a distant Russia. He has erased the country, culture, and language from his memory, and rejects the faded heritage with which his parents feed him. His homeland is France, and his language will be French, which he admires above all else, along with his court of writers whom he venerates. At school, he meets Thierry, a brilliant and fascinating student, but set apart from the others due to his disability. An unbreakable friendship is born between them, based on mutual admiration and made of passionate intellectual exchanges. Aliocha and Thierry, model and mirror to each other, discover together during these months the sunny paths of their young years. Thus, Aliocha, strengthened by this new friendship, will gradually understand the treasure that his double identity holds. In Henri Troyat's formidable production, Aliocha appears as a tribute full of nostalgia and modesty to the young boy he was. It is undoubtedly the most endearing of his novels.