Fortune
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In 1806 Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Prussia. Beginning on the very day he leads his triumphant Grande Armee into Berlin through the Brandenburg Gate, Fortune traces the fates of a handful of souls whose lives briefly touch on that momentous day and then diverge across the globe.
Spanning more than a century, the novel moves from the Napoleonic Wars to South America, and from the early penal settlement of Van Diemen's Land to the cannons of the First World War, mapping the reverberations of history on ordinary people. Some lives are willed into action and others are merely endured, but all are subject to the unpredictable whims of chance. Fortune is a historical novel like no other, a perfect jewel of epic and intense brilliance.
'A thrilling tale of adventure told across centuries and continents...It made me laugh and cry and swear with astonishment. It is savage and nihilistic, wise and kind, never less than gripping, and it is over far sooner than you want it to be. And every line is marked with the author's unmistakable stylistic signature: somewhere between Roger Federer at the net and Mick Jagger's rooster strut.' Geordie Williamson, Chief Literary Critic, The Australian
Praise for Infamy:
'In Infamy Lenny Bartulin has written a rip-snorting, swashbuckling Aussie western set in the early part of the nation's history. He evokes the hardness and the grimness of colonial life, taking us through the slums and rum houses, the criminal dens and stinking penal hulks. Bartulin gives a visceral sense of the place, of the heat and isolation that bubbles up through savage drinking binges and dockland murders, whorehouses and massacres. And, via the stories of "Black Betty" and Robert Ringa, Infamy condemns Australia's appalling history of persecuting indigenous people. Bartulin's prose is muscular and evocative and cinematic cuts between plot lines keep the action moving fast throughout. Infamy is an excellent read. It is a book that gets the blood flowing and the fist pounding, and makes you glad you don't live by a dockyard tavern in 1830s Tasmania.' SMH/Age review
'With vivid characters, deep psychological understanding and symphonic plotting, Infamy drew me in so completely that it was a shock to find out that this is a work of the imagination. Bartulin has made fiction stranger, and more compelling, than truth.' Malcolm Knox
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Australian writer Bartulin channels Henry Fielding in this spirited account of a handful of strangers who cross paths across decades and the planet. During Napoleon's triumphant Oct. 27, 1806, appearance in Berlin, the reader meets Johannes Meyer, an 18-year-old dreamer who cares little for his future; Elisabeth von Hoffman, 17, whose wanderlust is quashed by her guardian aunt; Claus von Rolt, a Prussian obsessed with collecting exotic beetles and other objects; American entrepreneur Wesley Lewis Jr.; and enslaved Surinamese man Mr. Hendrick, who is forced to accompany Lewis on a mission to deliver a barrel of electric eels to von Rolt. Johannes and Elisabeth, who glimpse each other for a moment in a crowd, are at the center of the narrative, set primarily against Napoleon's military campaigns. With consummate skill, Bartulin weaves the trajectory of Johannes's conscriptions in the French and British military (and subsequent imprisonments and escapes) with Elisabeth's parallel courtships by multiple suitors, leading toward a second run-in between the two in 1834 Chile, as Lewis and Hendrick head back to Suriname for more adventures. While the ending is a bit underwhelming, more satisfying is what lies in store for some of the other characters, such as the ironic outcome of Claus's preoccupation with shrunken heads. Bartulin's intricate canvas handily captures the vagaries of human life.
