The loss of a child - what could be more terrible for a father and mother and what could be more hopeless? The hero of the new novel by Laurent Godet rebels against this hopelessness, creating a modern variation on an eternal theme: the descent into hell. Now Orpheus goes by the name Matteo: he is a taxi driver in Naples, his six-year-old son dies from an accidental bullet during a mafia showdown, his wife loses her mind. To save them, you need to compete with death itself: Matteo goes to her kingdom. Pictures of the Neapolitan bottom are replaced by pictures of the underworld, in which Dante’s forest of suicides, Acheron, and the iron city of demons are recognizable. To bring his son out of the kingdom of shadows and save his mother from the hell of madness, the father will go to the end. A piercing story about despair and anger, about love conquering death, a story in which myth and everyday authenticity, esotericism and psychology are intertwined. Laurent Godet (b. 1972), French novelist and playwright, author of the books “Screams” (2001), “The Death of King Tsongor” (2002, Russian translation 2006), “The Sun of the Skorta Clan” (2004, Prix Goncourt, Russian translation 2006), “Eldorado” (2006). “The Gates of Hell” is his fifth novel.

[collapse]Once again Godet gives us a fascinating and brilliantly written novel that makes us think about the issues that concern everyone. “Kultur Store”

Godet's new novel, inspired by Orphic mythology, tells the story of the impossibility of coming to terms with death, the torments of grief and retribution. Express

The Gates of Hell is a fantasy novel, but with characters of flesh and blood . It is in them that the strength of this extraordinary book lies. “Figaro”

The novel is strong and gloomy, like a soul condemned to eternal torment. The reader is simply doomed to accept him into his heart. "Libération"[/collapsed]