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It was Christmas, a few years ago. I had been invited to join a wolf hunt in a province of the Russian interior. The morning was superb: ten degrees of frost, a bright sun in a blue sky, not a breath of wind; plains stretching to the horizon, everything a raw white with pink glints and hints of gold; a dead world gleaming like old bone china.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
First lines, Winter Tales<\/em>, Eug\u00e8ne-Melchior de Vog\u00fc\u00e9, 1893, my translation<\/p>\n
Certain words of the first two sentences had my attention from the start: Christmas, wolf hunt, Russian interior.<\/p>\n
Set in Russia and Ukraine, these tales are the writing of a French diplomat who lived there for seven years and married a Russian aristocrat. His unnamed narrator, invited to join the wolf hunt, was staying with a host who had lived through the times of serfdom and its abolition. The host tells stories of former serfs, beginning and ending with his own story as a property and serf owner during this era.<\/p>\n
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And that, my friends, is my last offering to the list of Great Opening Lines. I do hope you’ve been inspired to hunt down some of these books, particularly the less-known novels and collections. If you have, please leave me your kind reflections on them.<\/p>\n
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This is it, 46 of 46. More importantly, together with the 54 Great Opening Lines I posted a couple of years ago (click on ‘categories’ to go there), now there are a hundred all together. This last opener is from my (unpublished) translation of a book of short stories. Here today in Canberra it’s mid-winter, … <\/p>\n