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Leo Tolstoy

Peasant drama in five acts based on a real criminal case in Tula province. The labourer Nikita, seduced by his master's wife, is dragged from crime to crime — poisoning, adultery, infanticide — until he confesses publicly. Its subtitle is a proverb: "If a claw is caught, the bird is lost". Banned in Russia until 1895, it premiered at the Théâtre Libre in Paris in 1888.