![]() The melodrama is sometimes laid on thick, but Falcones’s rich portrait of medieval society is fascinating. The plot features thwarted romance, war, plague, immolations and self-immolations, set in a Machiavellian world ruled by privilege, cronyism and brute force. ![]() ![]() Arnau is a kindhearted, somewhat passive figure who combines piety, industry and cosmopolitanism to challenge a corrupt, dogmatic church and a parasitic nobility. Written by Ildefonso Falcones Nick Caistor (trans.) Set in 14th-century Catalonia, this novel has become a huge bestseller in Spain with translations sold in 32. Alas, his dizzying social assent and defiance of the feudal order provoke enraged aristocrats-his status-obsessed wife included-into siccing the Inquisition on him. Arnau Estanyol, son of a fugitive peasant, starts out in 14th-century Barcelona as a lowly porter who carries stone blocks to a cathedral construction site and ends up a rich moneylender who saves the city from pillaging and frees the serfs of a barony he acquires by marriage. ![]() Medieval Spain’s caste system can’t keep a good man down in this absorbing epic, a Spanish-language bestseller. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |