Foreign Legion officer Galoup recalls his once glorious life, training troops in the Gulf of Djibouti. His existence there was happy, strict and regimented, until the arrival of a promising young recruit, Sentain, plants the seeds of jealousy in Galoup's mind.
After the death of his mother, twelve-year-old Martin joins his unknown father in Africa. Newly conceived by this father, who is more worried about the reserve he manages than about his 'new' son, thanks to the friendship between Fofana and Victor, Martin discovers this completely new country and its contradictions. The disappearance of the elephants brings father and son closer together.
The Russian Story profiles Anatoly Rybakov, a best-selling Russian novelist. His personal life follows Russia in the XXth century, a country destroyed in Stalinist purges and in the battlefields of World War II.
