La Soif
This is a bit of a mishap, but a happy one somehow.
The brief asked to produce an image to be used for the book cover of La Soif, a short novel by Andrei Guelassimov set in Russia and Chechnya.
La Soif in French means The Thirst. The brief was set in French whilst I was on study exchange at Ensad, Paris, and this is the main reason behind the mishap. The book is very tragic indeed, as only Russian books translated into French can be. It tells the story of Constantin, a tank crew chap who gets horrifically burnt in an attack whilst serving in Chechnya. He subsequently gets back to Russia and starts drinking excessively, to use a euphemism.
Then he decides that what is needed for him to escape alcoholism is to make a trip with his 2 other comrades in order to find the 4th crew member who's still lost somewhere in Russia. A sort of straightforward, sad contemporary novel. The tragic level of my French at that time played a pivotal role (with my excessive imagination) in completely misunderstanding the importance of what I was dealing with. I somehow came to the conclusion that this was a tragicomic novel about a tank crew that gets attacked in Chechnya, loses its fourth member, starts to drink vodka indiscriminately and through a cloud of alcoholic vapours drives its tank around Chechnya trying to find the missing member. I thought it was a rather bizarre plot but I somehow liked it in its sheer randomness.
So I got into the driving seat of my desk and tried to imagine what could go through the mind of a vodka-crazed Russian tank driver whilst he drives his delirious tank erratically around war-torn Chechnya.
The French laughed at me.
