For the first time in Russian - perhaps the loudest debut in new British prose, a masterpiece of modern neo-Gothic. The novel by a 19-year-old Oxford student, purchased for a record sum at a fierce publishing auction, has been translated into three dozen languages and sold 5 million copies worldwide. Sophisticated reviewers and the general reader - one and all noted the amazing maturity of the young author, who, without the slightest, it would seem, tension, entered the field where such titans as Evelyn Waugh and Iris Murdoch shone. Beginning the book with the shocking confession of an 80-year-old musician to the murder of his wife after half a century of marriage, Mason takes the reader through an amazing labyrinth of mirrors, where everything is unsteady, everything is not what it seems, and the love of a brilliant violinist for the heiress of an ancient castle on the island turns out to be truly fatal...