About the book: year / Boileau-Narcejac is the joint pseudonym of Pierre Boileau (1906 - 1989) and Thomas Narcejac (1908 - 1998). Pierre Louis Boileau was born in Paris. After receiving a commercial education, he worked in a felt factory. Narcejac (born Pierre Robert Hérault) was born in Rochefort-sur-Mer. After graduating from college, he taught philosophy. What they had in common was a love for the detective story and his heroes - Arsene Lupin, Fantômas, Rouletabille. Boileau started writing earlier. In 1932, stories appeared in the magazine "Reading for Everyone", the hero of which - detective Andre Brunel - migrated to the novel "Trembling Pierre" (1934). Boileau's fourth book, The Rest of Bacchus, received the Grand Prix of French adventure literature in 1938. In the same year, Narsezhak began to write. In 1947, Boileau bought Narcejac's Aesthetics of the Detective Genre, in which he discovered an analysis of his work. A correspondence began between them, and in 1948 the writers met at the ceremony of awarding the Grand Prix to Narcejac for his fourth novel, Death on Departure. The writers found a lot in common in their views on the detective story, its “crisis” and ways of overcoming it (they were not satisfied with the then established scheme of both the classic, the police novel, and the hard-boiled novel, where everything revolved around the duel between the investigator and the criminal. The authors insisted on the need creating more vivid characters, a deeper psychological analysis of both the crime and the heroes, and, in particular, the victim, which most works simply neglected, limiting its role to the starting point of the narrative). Since 1950 they began to work together. Boileau came up with the plot, Narcejac developed psychological portraits of the characters. Their first joint experience, “Shadow and Sacrifice” (1951), went on sale in 1958 under the pseudonym Alain Buccarger. The second book, “The One That Wasn’t There,” suffered many rejections, but gained fame after a successful film adaptation by director Henri Clouzot. Despite the ominous predictions, the Boileau-Narcejac alliance turned out to be unbreakable. They wrote more than 30 novels, many stories, several screenplays, books for children and the study "Detective Novel" (1964). Many of their works have been filmed. The last joint novel was the book “The Sun in the Hand,” published a year after Boileau’s death. The work of these authors had a significant impact on the development of the psychological detective story, especially on the French detective novel. Contents:1. From the kingdom of the dead (Translation: M. Stebakova, Nina Svetovidova, Anna Raiskaya, Liya Zavyalova)2. Sleeping Beauty Castle. Complete set of works. Volume 2 (Translation: B. Skorokhodov, L. Korneeva, Alexey Drozdovsky)3. Not in harmony with the heart (Translation: Rubela Zakaryan, V. Lelikov, Maria Mashkova, Nina Svetovidova)4. The solution to the charade is a person (Translation: M. Stebakova, Anna Raiskaya, Liya Zavyalova)5. Sea Gate (Translation: Liya Zavyalova, Marina Mikhailova, V. Lelikov)6. Life is in pieces (Translation: A. Valetov, L. Korneeva, A. Raiskaya)7. Operation “Primrose” (Translation: B. Skorokhodov, Nina Svetovidova, V. Lelikov)8. Final stop (Translation: V. Rumyantsev, Liya Zavyalova, Nina Svetovidova)9. A favorite of the audience (Translation: E Tsyb, Anna Raiskaya, Tatyana Vorsanova, O Ivanova, Liya Zavyalova)10. In a close circle (Translation: Liya Zavyalova, Nina Svetovidova, Elena Golovina, B. Skorokhodov, V. Plyutinsky)11. The sun in hand (Translation: I. Shvedchenko, V. Rumyantsev, L. Korneeva, Elena Golovina)