A novel of scope and beauty: A Woman Loved

Increasingly impressed with Andrei Makine's A Woman Loved as I am now more than half-way through the novel; story is about a young screenwriter in the Soviet era, the early 1980s, working on a screenplay about the life, the sex life primarily, of Catherine the Great, and at first I was put off by how much attention Makine spent on the screenplay - his way of incorporating into this capacious novel a brief history of Catherine's life. I still think he spends too much time/space on that topic, but as the novel progresses we realize that it's about so much else: the struggles of a young writer in that era of severe state censorship, the tensions and prejudices - little know to Western readers I think - between native Russians and Russians of German descent in the years after WWII (the screenwriter, Oleg, is of German background - and a powerful section of the novel recounts the sufferings of his parents - banishment to Siberia, struggle to establish a career as an architect/engineer - knowing that Makine was born in Siberia I wonder to what extent this story is his own), the art of filmmaking - some very good scenes on the set once the film is actually - to my surprise, it seemed like the most ridiculously overwritten screenplay, the complex relations on the film set as actors pretend to love (and have sex with) other actors and then build personal - if ephemeral - relationships among the cast and crew. Ultimately, Oleg is kicked off the set, denounced for some anti-state activities, and his name is eradicated from the finished film. And the the world changes for him - and we move forward into the post-Brezhnev era, with opportunities for writers opening, broadening, the fall of the Soviet Union, and as we move into the 2nd half of the book we see Oleg now as an older man, now working for a small publication that's attacked by a gunman - not clear yet if there was a political motive for the attack - and Old heroically takes a bullet in an attempt to overcome the attacker, and we see him in the hospital, recovering, and it's a different world: patients have to bribe doctors w/ US dollars for sufficient pain meds, for ex. There's so much in this book - a history of Russia spanning centuries, the story of an artist in a time of change, a story of young love failed, and much beautiful writing. I wonder why Makine hasn't found the readership in the U.S. that some of the Easter European writers have - perhaps because, a bit younger than, say, Kundera, and an early emigrant, he never had the need or opportunity to confront the state while still living within and under Soviet rule.