Vipers' Tangle

8 hrs. 2 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author François Mauriac

Narrator Evgeny Ternovsky

Description

François Mauriac is one of the most prominent figures in 20th-century literature. A Nobel Prize laureate, he created his own distinctive—and distinctly Mauriac—type of novel. Continuing the tradition laid down by O. de Balzac, É. Zola, and Mauriac, he explores the finest nuances of human psychology. At the center of most of his works are relationships within the family. Life constantly tests Mauriac’s heroes, and few of them endure these trials with honor.

The novel brings to the reader’s judgment the confession of its main protagonist—Gobhsek and Harpagon’s story at the dawn of the 20th century: a 68-year-old old man, a millionaire advocate, trying to explain his actions. Proud, suspicious, calculating, and unwilling to accept anything he doesn’t want to believe. A tangle of snakes coils around his heart—biting it painfully and relentlessly. Who sent them after him? Or did he grow them himself? Or perhaps the snake-tangle on the souls of the people close to him?