For a whole century, a villa stood on the banks of the Marne, which was first called “Selene”, and then was renamed in honor of the Egyptian goddess Nut. Comedies and dramas were played out here, laughter, sobs, screams, the yelping of Pekingese, the meowing of cats, the croaking of a raven, the squeaking of rats, the voice of a violin and the clatter of a sewing machine were heard. Here lived a gravedigger, an exhibitionist, merchants, Jewish refugees, feminists, a hairdresser dying of AIDS, a young Antoinette, endowed with the features of Gabrielle Wittkop herself, and her husband, a deserter from Hitler's army. This house was inhabited by the living, but it was inhabited by a dead man: the ghost of the first owner , the dissatisfied spirit of the strangled man, and the inhabitants of the attic sometimes saw the black handbag that he brought here on the day of his death. The novel “Inheritance” by Gabriel Wittkop (1920–2002) is published for the first time simultaneously in France and Russia.