Sixteen-year-old Lucas spends every summer with his mother at his grandfather's house. Now my grandfather has died, but everyone around him lies or doesn’t talk about his past. Lucas, feeling that he is “stuck in something incomprehensible,” tries to find support in his friendship with Benoit, an ultra-right radical and demagogue. Benoit has clear answers to all questions, and he tests his racist ideas with practice.

Anne Provost's novel “The Fall” was published in 1994 and immediately became a bestseller, entered the IBBY Honor List, and received a dozen European literary awards and is still included in the school curriculum in Belgium and the Netherlands. The book was adapted for the theater three times and filmed in 2001. And here is the first translation into Russian.

This is a powerful and exciting text about the connection between the past and the present, about choice and responsibility, and also a tragic story of first love.

“If only I twenty years ago they asked what the future holds for this book, I would most likely answer that in the twenty-first century it will become outdated. By that time, Europe will turn into a melting pot of nationalities and cultures, and racial prejudices will completely disappear,” says author Anne Provost about this work. Alas, the problems identified in “The Fall” are still relevant today.