The People's Act Of Love

A quite extraordinary novel -- Philip Pullman Vivid, brutal and exhilarating * * Daily Mail * * The best and most original book that I have read for years -- Louis de Bernieres James Meek's immense and consistently impressive narrative incorporates the bizarre-but-true extremes of post-revolutionary Russia. . . Meek keeps the sensational elements at the service of a profound, propulsive plot, while maintaining a pleasingly sardonic edge throughout. . . All this plus an unflinching castration scene which presents a truly eye-watering account of severe pain in the Urals. * * Guardian * * I was gripped by James Meek's Siberian western The People's Act of Love... With admirable confidence Meek combines big country and big characters to create a sort of intellectual epic, which I enjoyed for its revelation of a fascinating corner of 20th-century history. -- Michael Palin [It] has the strangeness and clarity of a dream. This is historical fiction that transcends the genre - as intense as a thriller, imagined on an epic scale. * * The Times * * Meek's study of slow de-humanisation and his characters' ultimate willingness to sacrifice personal happiness and, in many cases, much more for an intangible ideal is, in terms of story-telling and intellectual suggestiveness, addictive. * * Observer * * A strikingly unusual and ambitious novel. . . Violence and sensuality commingle in a tense, complex thriller with the sweep and flavour of Russia. * * Sunday Telegraph * *

1919, Siberia . . . Deep in the unforgiving landscape a town lies under military rule, awaiting the remorseless assault of Bolsheviks along the Trans-Siberian railway. One night a stranger, Samarin, appears from the woods with a tale of escape from an Arctic prison, insisting a cannibal is on his trail. Only Anna, a beautiful young widow, trusts his story. When a local shaman is found dead suspicion and terror engulf the isolated community, which harbours a secret of its own . . .