The People's Act Of Love - Tapa blanda

[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 * * 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 * * 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 * * 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 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. Then Samarin arrives. Appearing from the woods with a tale of escape from an Arctic prison, he says he is being chased by a cannibal. Anna, a beautiful young widow, feels something for the new arrival. Then the local shaman is found dead and suspicion and terror engulf the little town.