Irène Némirovsky - O Caso Kurilov

Schopenhauer: "If you can descend into the heart of your most hated enemy, you will find yourself there."

"In this book, a curious story of cohabitation between the murderer and his victim stands out. Lev M…, assuming a false identity as a doctor, infiltrates the innermost circles of a fierce dictator whose physical elimination is advocated by revolutionary committees of communist inspiration. But a profound knowledge of human nature reveals itself as the worst enemy of revolutionary purity. Although Kurilov is seen by Lev M… as 'the imbecile,' 'the sperm whale,' the 'cold despot,' feelings of obscure pity will eventually cause him to falter before that enormous decline of the body ravaged by liver cancer, that erosion, that painful twilight of power." And Lev M…, when he writes these memoirs, and he himself already has in his past a period of life in which he practiced, in the service of the socialist revolution, acts of cruelty as cold as those of the Tsarist dictator, all that remains for him is a melancholic awareness of his final days, one that the mild sun of Nice barely manages to illuminate.»
Aníbal Fernandes