The Swedish Cavalier
A Novel
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
A thief and a nobleman, both down on their luck, cross paths on a bitter winter’s day in 1701. One, known locally as “The Fowl-Filcher,” is fleeing the gallows; the other, the callow Christian von Tornefeld, has escaped execution to fight for his Swedish king. Neither will reach his destination. Sent with a message to secure aid for von Tornefeld, the thief falls in love with his companion’s secret fiancée. He resolves to win her love for himself, and through a clever stratagem, exchanges his fate for the other man’s. Risking everything to attain the woman and station of his dreams, he becomes the Swedish cavalier, staying one step ahead of exposure. Later, he sacrifices everything so that is daughter won’t learn of his secret past.
In this book he considered is masterpiece, Leo Perutz has created a picaresque world of barons and brigands, swashbuckling dragoons and spurned lovers, gentleman farmers and masked robbers, and lucky parchments, magic spells, and mystical visions. Part adventure, part historical novel of war-ravaged Europe, The Sweddish Cavalier is also a moral tale of deceit, betrayal, and redemption.
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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Written in the style of an 18th-century adventure, Perutz's leisurely tale of switched identities and reversals of fortune concerns a nameless thief fleeing the gallows who crosses paths in 1701 with a noble-born deserter from the Swedish army. The brazen thief betrays the nobleman, Christian von Tornefeld, by assuming his identity while on an errand, then taking over his cousin's manorial estate in Silesia and marrying his young, adoring fiancee Maria, who believes that the imposter is von Tornefeld. Meanwhile, Christian takes the thief's promised job, enduring nine hellish years as a foundry worker. Moments of high drama and broad comedy enliven the tale, which takes a number of twists before the two men meet on the road years later to exchange identities once again, a move that proves fatal for both. Prague-born novelist Perutz ( Little Apple ), who fled the Nazis to Palestine and died in 1957, spins an allegory that implicitly asks: If God is just, why do evil and injustice flourish? Brownjohn's deft translation captures a rough-and-tumble milieu saturated with superstitions, spells and folk customs.
