Kolkhoz

WINNER OF THE PRIX MÉDICIS 2025

A landmark work of memoir by one of France’s most important writers

Written in the aftermath of his mother’s death, Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, a leading authority on Soviet and Russian history, Kolkhoz is a multi-layered personal history of France, Ukraine and Russia through four generations of Emmanuel Carrère’s family, mapping personal and familial anecdotes against a wider historical, cultural and political backdrop.

Written in his renowned, distilled and captivating prose, Carrère seamlessly moves from the biographical to the historical – the public to the private – to piece together both a fascinating, multigenerational family history and a vivid portrait of a tumultuous period of European and Russian history, right through to the war in Ukraine, the Covid pandemic and his mother’s death in 2023.

Kolkhoz is a landmark work of memoir by one of France’s most important writers. Expansive and grossing, it is perhaps Carrère’s most personal and ambitious work to date – a love letter to the family who raised and shaped him, and his ode to the persistence of the human spirit.