
Written as the confession of a man who has turned his back on love and pity, The Knot of Vipers explores the venality and greed which can be masked by apparent virtue, and the inverted spirituality which may lie at the heart of vice. In a country house deep in the Bordeaux vineyards an old man writes a curse on his wife, children and grandchildren who plot and play in the house and garden around him.
For the dying Louis, a prosperous lawyer risen to wealth from the peasantry, the disinheritance of his obsequious and grasping family will be the consummate pleasure of a life built on avarice and harshness. But as Louis gathers in the bitter harvest of his hatred, the plan of revenge becomes a confession, a cry from the depths for an absolution in which he does not believe.