The Brewer of Preston
A Novel
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
The New York Times bestselling author of the Inspector Montalbano series brings us back to Vigàta in the nineteenth century for a rip-roaring comic novel.
1870s Sicily. Much to the displeasure of Vigàta’s stubborn populace, the town has just been unified under the Kingdom of Italy. They’re now in the hands of a new government they don’t understand, and they definitely don’t like. Eugenio Bortuzzi has been named Prefect for Vigàta, a regional representative from the Italian government to oversee the town. But the rowdy and unruly Sicilians don’t care much for this rather pompous mainlander nor the mediocre opera he’s hell-bent on producing in their new municipal theater. The Brewer of Preston, it’s called, and the Vigàtese are revving up to wreak havoc on the performance’s opening night.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fans of Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series (Angelica's Smile, etc.) will relish this amusing, playful tale set in Vig ta, Sicily, in 1874. The citizens of Vig ta are smarting under the rule of the prefect of Montelusa, Eugenio Bortuzzi, who has decided that the town's impressive new theater will be inaugurated by a performance of The Brewer of Preston. The opera was written by a mediocre composer, Luigi Ricci, who once presented a rehashing of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro as his own work. Grumbles from the Vig ta Civic Club reach the ear of Bortuzzi via the tongue of Emanuele "Uncle Mem " Ferraguto, a self-serving toady. Fire strikes the theater mere hours after its inauspicious opening. A series of absurd incidents follow in almost random fashion, some comic, some tragic. Camilleri cleverly ends the novel with chapter one, which provides the perfect summation that proves history is written (or rewritten) by the survivors.
