The Vatican cellars

Could the Pope have been secretly abducted? André Gide's famous satire centres around a group of ingenious fraudsters, who convince their wealthy victims that the pontiff has been imprisoned by freemasons. Ranging from madcap farce to scenes of romance and even murder, it is a send-up of conventional morality, most clearly in the picaresque character of Lafcadio, whose notorious behaviour in the novel provoked outrage at the time of publication. Though in a more light-hearted vein than other works by Gide, this unusual novel still questions how individuals should live their life when faced with the rigid social and ethical structures that surround us.