Evil Angels

No sooner do naive lovers Didier and Beatrice board the Truva, on what is to be its last voyage, than they fall into the icy grips of the embittered cripple Franz and his beautiful wife Rebecca. In the suffocating, deathlike atmosphere of the ship, heading for the Orient with its international roster of travelers, Franz forces Didier, the narrator, to hear the tale of Franz's and Rebecca's destructive infatuation. From its inception to its burgeoning, they have wallowed in their consuming passion to the point of surfeit and disgust. Now that they are locked together in mutual loathing, they can proceed to seduce Didier and Beatrice, whom they crush. Bruckner, author of the nonfiction The Tears of the White Man: Compassion as Contempt, is gifted with a fertile and merciless imagination for exploring the ""lyrical leprosy of endless love.'' The satire is biting and brilliant, proceeding in a tone that is sly and distanced, even philosophicalas with the systematic discussion of six general categories of how to humiliate a woman. A bestseller in France, Evil Angels is a diabolical anatomy of lust in all its ramifications, with a plot that will keep readers enthralled. (June 30)