The People Opposite

The People Opposite

Summary

'You'll get used to things, you'll see. But you have to watch very carefully what you say and what you do.'

Adil Bey is an outsider. Newly arrived as Turkish consul at a run-down Soviet port on the Black Sea, he receives only suspicion and hostility from the locals. His one intimacy is a growing, wary relationship with his Russian secretary Sonia, who he watches silently in her room opposite his apartment. But this is Stalin's world before the war, and nothing is as it seems. Georges Simenon's most starkly political work, The People Opposite is a tour de force of slow-burn tension.

'Irresistible... read him at your peril, avoid him at your loss' Sunday Times

Reviews

  • A unique teller of tales ... What interested Simenon was the average man losing control of his own fate
    Observer

About the author

Georges Simenon

Georges Simenon was born in Liège, Belgium, in 1903. He is best known in Britain as the author of the Maigret novels and his prolific output of over 400 novels and short stories have made him a household name in continental Europe. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.
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