The People Opposite (Romans Durs)
About this ebook
From the moment he arrives in the remote Soviet port town of Batumi, the Turkish consul Adil Bey finds himself plunged into an atmosphere of isolation and intimidation. The old rules of diplomacy seem to mean nothing. His fellow consuls are dismissive, even hostile, while Soviet officials merely smile and delay. Even as crowds of hungry petitioners swarm the consulate, his every request seems to disappear into a bureaucratic void. As arrests, rumors, and unexplained deaths accumulate, Bey begins to grasp that in Batumi, power operates invisibly, and that good intentions offer no defense.
Written after Georges Simenon’s own journey through the Soviet Union, The People Opposite is both a slow-burn political novel and a devastating portrait of psychological suffocation. In sparse, exacting prose, Simenon captures the erosion of selfhood under constant surveillance and the moral ambiguities surfaced by a system in which responsibility is endlessly deferred.
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About the author
Georges Simenon (1903–1989) was born in Liège, Belgium. An intrepid traveler with a profound interest in people, Simenon strove on and off the page to understand—and not to judge—the human condition in all its shades. His books include the Inspector Maigret series and a richly varied body of wider work united by its evocative power, its economy of means, and its penetrating psychological insight. He is among the most widely read writers in the global canon.
Siân Reynolds was born in Cardiff, and taught at both the University of Sussex and the University of Edinburgh before serving as chair of French at the University of Stirling from 1990 to 2004. She has translated numerous books from the French, both fiction and nonfiction, including works by the crime writer Fred Vargas.
