A murder without motive. That's what makes Lafcadio Wluiki free. Nineteen years old, newly wealthy, and utterly bored with the world's moral certainties, he throws himself into a life of expense and experiment, traveling through the capitals of Europe in expensive clothes. When he crosses paths with a Vatican conspiracy involving an imprisoned Pope, a failed atheist scientist turned believer, and an elaborate scheme of Church extortion, the结果 is a brilliantly sly detective farce where the wrong man goes to prison and the charmingly monstrous Lafcadio escapes through the cracks. But the novel's true engine is philosophical: Gide uses his protagonist's 'unmotivated crime' to pose the question that haunts modern thought - can we ever truly act freely, or are we always trapped by circumstance, conscience, or the need to prove something to ourselves? Sharp, comic, and genuinely unsettling.
