About the book: 2017 / “The Vatican Dungeons” (1914) is the most unusual novel by the great Andre Gide. A witty, full of mischievous humor, the story of a gang of swindlers-intellectuals who conceived a truly ingenious way of “taking money from the population” - raising funds for a crusade to free the unfortunate Pope, allegedly kidnapped by the Freemasons and imprisoned in the Vatican dungeons. “Counterfeiters” (1925) - a work , significant both for the work of Andre Gide and for French literature of the first half of the 20th century in general. A novel that largely predicted the motives that later became fundamental in the work of the existentialists. The entangled relationships of three families - representatives of the big bourgeoisie, united by crime, vice and a labyrinth of self-destructive passions, become the backdrop for the coming of age story of two young men - two childhood friends, each of whom will have to go through their own, very difficult school of “education of feelings”».