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People's Act of Love, The

People's Act of Love, The

by JamesMeek (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2006

    $8.75
Synopsis

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.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 400
 Edition: Export and airside e.
 Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 02 Feb 2006
ISBN 10: 1841957658
ISBN 13: 9781841957654

Media Reviews
[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 * *
If this savage, sublime epic of civil war in Siberia in 1919 owes a debt to great Russians, it knows how to benefit from standing on the shoulders of giants. Meek surpasses mere pastiche, as idealism - personal, revolutionary and religious - comes to grief in a lonely village. Blood stains the snows (and how!), but horror yields to humanity in this novel of Whites, Reds and even a castrates' cult, all locked in a last battle of dreams and delusions * * The Independent * *
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 * *
A strikingly unusual and ambitious novel. . . Violence and sensuality commingle in a tense, complex thriller with the sweep and flavour of Russia * * Sunday Telegraph * *
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
Author Bio
James Meek was born in London in 1962 and grew up in Dundee. We Are Now Beginning Our Descent is his fourth novel. The People's Act of Love (2005), won the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, the SAC Book of the Year Award, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and has been translated into more than twenty languages. He has published two collections of short stories, Last Orders and The Museum Of Doubt, and contributed to the acclaimed Rebel Inc anthologies The Children Of Albion Rovers and The Rovers Return. He has worked as a journalist since 1985, and his reporting from Iraq and about Guantanamo Bay won a number of British and international awards. In the autumn of 2001 he reported for the Guardian from Afghanistan on the war against the Taliban and the liberation of Kabul.