Longlisted for last year’s Man Booker, Meek’s powerful epic is set in post-Revolutionary Russia, and concerns an isolated Siberian religious community whose members, including the saintly Gleb Balashov, have carried their vow of chastity to extremes. Living among them is the beautiful Anna Petrovna, whose reasons for having thrown in her lot with the self-styled “angels” emerge only later. Other inhabitants of the little town of Yazyk include Anna’s lover, Lieutenant Mutz, an officer in the Czechoslovakian Legion, whose leader, Captain Matula, is a psychopath and a sadist. Nor is he alone in his predilection for cruelty: menacing the community is the “Mohican”, an escaped convict and cannibal.

The book contains some extremely grisly accounts not only of cannibalism — apparently rife at the time in the icy wastes of the steppes — but of self-mutilation. As well as these unnecessarily gruesome passages, there is some fine description of landscape, and some convincing historical detail. Best of all is the depiction of the relationship between the alluring Anna and the various men in her life: the faithful Mutz, the “angelic” Balashov, and the mysterious Samarin, whose true identity she — and the reader — discovers when it is almost too late.

Gripping and thought-provoking, The People’s Act of Love brings an otherwise forgotten episode of Russian history vividly to life.

LABYRINTH
by Kate Mosse
Orion, £7.99

Hard on the heels of Dan Brown’s blockbuster comes this Girls’ Own version of the quest for the Holy Grail which, at 700 pages, is an ideal — if weighty — flight companion for your last-minute winter break. Mosse’s heroine, Alice Tanner, is an archaeologist. On a dig in the Pyrenees, she stumbles across two skeletons in a cave, on the wall of which is a strangely familiar carving of a labyrinth. Her discovery attracts the attention of the local police and of several more sinister individuals — including a rightwing politician and a beautiful but ruthless aristocrat — and Alice is caught in a desperate and dangerous search for the truth behind the mystery.

Interspersed with this 21st-century tale are chapters set in 13th-century Carcassone, in which Alice’s near-namesake, Alais, learns that her family are guardians of an ancient tradition, whose initiates wear a ring inscribed with a labyrinth. As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that the lives of both women are inextricably linked, and that Alice must fulfil what Alais has set in motion.

The author, co-founder and director of the Orange Prize, has combined an ingenious adventure story with a wonderfully detailed account of the historical background of the Languedoc and, in particular, of the Cathar rebellion. The result is entirely compelling and full of incidental pleasures. One only hopes that it won’t cause a stampede of “Grail groupies” to the Midi-Pyrenees.

Q & A
by Vikas Swarup
Black Swan, £6.99

Swarup’s engaging novel — soon to be adapted for both stage and screen — tells the story of Ram Mohammed Thomas, a poor Bombay (Mumbai) waiter who achieves overnight fame and fortune by winning the jackpot in a television quiz show. When he is investigated by the police for suspected fraud, after the television company refuses to believe that he came by the answers to the 12 winning questions fairly, Ram is helped by the mysterious Smita, who offers to act as his legal representative if he can convince her that he wasn’t cheating.

What follows are 12 chapters documenting the crucial events in Ram’s life. In these episodes, he argues, can be found the answers to each of the questions Thus the answer to the first — on Indian cinema — springs from a traumatic encounter with a celebrated Bollywood star in a cinema; the answer to a question on theology comes from his upbringing by a Catholic priest; that to one on cosmology from a conversation overheard in a Bombay slum; that to one on poetry from his experiences as the protégé of a vicious gangster and so on.

This enables the author to paint a wide range of different settings, from the grim juvenile home where Ram spent part of his childhood to the luxurious surroundings of an Australian diplomat’s house where he worked as an errand boy. Mingling broad humour with incisive social comment, Q & A is absorbing and richly entertaining reading.

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