Michael Dirda

These horses -- one can feel their gut-wrenching panic, almost see the white horror in their eyes -- call to mind their many frenzied predecessors in Western art: Maddened horses, like those in Picasso's "Guernica," are the very symbol of war's terror and devastation. From this magnificent scene until his heart-pounding final chapters, Meek never lets the narrative tension slacken. As Samarin -- for it is he -- shambles toward the village of Yazyk, the reader enters with him into a realm of madness, violence and death, where almost everyone has something to hide. Something terrible.

Why are there almost no children in Yazyk? Why is the beautiful Anna Petrovna living here alone with her young son? What happened to her passionate young husband, a hussar officer of commanding skill with horse and sword, as he fought on the western front? What does the drunken, chained-up shaman see in his apocalyptic visions? Why does the mercenary-like Czechoslovak Legion occupy the town even though the war is over? Who is this mysterious Mohican, this murderous anarchist relentlessly on the trail of Samarin? What, too, is the meaning of the strange "spinning" that accompanies the ecstatic religious ceremonies of the townspeople? And how long until the Red Army finally attacks under orders to wipe out the Czechoslovak Legion to the last man?

All Meek's characters spring to vivid life, whether the shaman's albino apprentice or the village headman Balashov, who is all gentleness despite the mysterious surgical instruments he carries in his knapsack. The cruel, sensual and oddly courtly commander of the Czechs, the 24-year-old Matula, possesses a Caligula-like depravity, from "the druggy charm of the captain's lips" to "the carcass soul in his eyes." Here he addresses his soldiers, now down to a hundred or so:

" 'Men,' said Matula, 'Comrades. Friends. We have fought together for five years. We have fought for the Emperor of the Austrians against the Emperor of the Russians. We have fought for the Emperor of the Russians against the Emperor of the Austrians. We have fought for the White Terror of the monarchists against the Red Terror of the Bolsheviks. We have fought with Socialist Revolutionaries and Cossacks against Cossacks and Socialist Revolutionaries. I can say to you, with pride, that not once have we compromised our ideals."

Matula's lieutenant Mutz -- reminiscent of Isaac Babel in that writer's Red Cavalry stories -- is kind, sensitive, deeply in love with Anna Petrovna and the novel's chief voice of reason. But he is surrounded by paranoia and insanity. When Mutz interrupts Samarin's testimony during his "trial," he himself is broken off by the would-be emperor of Siberia, still upset from the mysterious death of his horses and flying high on cocaine: " 'Mutz, Mutz, Mutz,' said Matula, with his free hand over his eyes. He massaged the bridge of his nose and his pistol hand twitched. 'Let the man tell his story. Don't interrupt again. My spirits are very turbulent now." Samarin's story, we learn, is one of unrelieved horror -- of starvation in an Arctic prison camp, of escape, of murder and possible cannibalism.

But there are other horrors besides these. Extremism, after all, is all too often the Russian way -- no compromises, no half-way measures, no holding back. This makes The People's Act of Love an altogether soul-shaking novel, tightly mixing pathos and grandeur, whether in the scene of the horses at the bridge, or of Anna's husband lost in the hallucinatory confusion of battle, in Samarin's cold determination to survive at all cost, or a young woman's ravenous hunger for love and fulfillment, and finally even in an angelic soul's decision to redeem his life through damnation. The principal action takes place over three days, but its scope is at once epic, even melodramatic, and deeply personal. For the Red Army will come to Yazyk, even as a heartless assassin finally appears, out of the fog of war, carrying a child in his arms, like Lear bearing the dead Cordelia.

Meek has created a tremendously impressive work of art, at once serious, upsetting and astonishingly moving. I'm sorry that I can't forthrightly discuss some of his carefully timed revelations, and so -- in two senses -- can't say enough about his book. It contains wonderfully tender passages -- a young couple's honeymoon, a criminal sweetly joshing a little boy -- and others of a primitive grisliness. Above all, it reminds us that true believers, in anything, nearly always end up sacrificing their humanity for abstractions.

The People's Act of Love also relieves, or sometimes augments, its ferocity through Russian-style gallows humor. Near the end, Mutz -- an old soldier at 30 -- is about to cross a street being strifed with rifle and cannon fire in a town of warring camps. As he goes, he turns to his little company of men, and says, "Lieutenant Dezort, Sergeant Nekovar, Private Broucek, please defend the crossroads while I'm away. Don't shoot at our friends unless it's really necessary." Ah, yes. But in a time of apocalyptic violence, how do you know your friends from your enemies? And besides, does it really matter? Sometimes innocent blood must flow to create heaven on Earth. Mustn't it? ·

Michael Dirda is a columnist for Book World. His e-mail address is mdirda@gmail.com, and his online discussion of books takes place each Wednesday at 2 p.m. on washingtonpost.com.