Alphonse, a young Walloon officer, is travelling to join his regiment in Madrid in 1739. But he soon finds himself mysteriously detained at a highway inn in the strange and varied company of thieves, brigands, cabbalists, noblemen, coquettes and gypsies, whose stories he records over sixty-six days. The resulting manuscript is discovered some forty years later in a sealed casket, from which tales of characters transformed through disguise, magic and illusion, of honour and cowardice, of hauntings and seductions, leap forth to create a vibrant polyphony of human voices. Jan Potocki (1761-1812) used a range of literary styles - gothic, picaresque, adventure, pastoral, erotica - in his novel of stories-within-stories, which, like the Decameron and Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, provides entertainment on an epic scale.
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First Sentence
At the time of which I speak, the Count of Olivarez had not yet established new settlements in the lowering mountain range of the Sierra Morena, which separates the provinces of Andalusia and La Mancha. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
At the time of which I speak, the Count of Olivarez had not yet established new settlements in the lowering mountain range of the Sierra Morena, which separates the provinces of Andalusia and La Mancha. Read the first page
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Imagine a book written by Edgar Allen Poe, translated by Edward Fitzgerald, filtered through the consciousness of Jorge Luis Borges, and you would have some inkling of what makes this extraordinary book so special. It is to literature what surrealism is to painting. Potocki, who on the strength of this book alone qualifies as Poland's greatest literary figure, prefigures the postmodern movement with his sleight-of-hand and multi-multi-layered text. A Freudian could spend years investigating the recesses and depths of Potocki's subconscious.
The framing device is a young nobleman's romantic wanderings through a section of Spain that could exist only in the mind of someone who was none too selective about his/her diet, or the kind of herbs they decided to ingest. A grotesque and lurid air suffuses this imaginative tale. The plot, if it could be called such a thing, unfolds like a chinese puzzle, one unreliable narrative nested within another. ...It wends its way into your thoughts like an ear-boring worm. It is the sort of work that Danielewski attempted, rather feebly by comparison, in his novel, House of Leaves. Potocki combines the supernatural with the erotic in a way that is unique in literature. Open the pages of this book and prepare to be disturbed and unsettled at times, but be prepared also to engage in a long, strange, diverting trip.
The framing device is a young nobleman's romantic wanderings through a section of Spain that could exist only in the mind of someone who was none too selective about his/her diet, or the kind of herbs they decided to ingest. A grotesque and lurid air suffuses this imaginative tale. The plot, if it could be called such a thing, unfolds like a chinese puzzle, one unreliable narrative nested within another. ...It wends its way into your thoughts like an ear-boring worm. It is the sort of work that Danielewski attempted, rather feebly by comparison, in his novel, House of Leaves. Potocki combines the supernatural with the erotic in a way that is unique in literature. Open the pages of this book and prepare to be disturbed and unsettled at times, but be prepared also to engage in a long, strange, diverting trip.
By the way there is a CD of a movie version of Manuscript which was made in Europe in the 60s. Apparently it has been shown periodically in San Francisco art houses, and was appreciated by Jerry Garcia, among others. If the movie even approximates the book, I could understand why.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Borne from the swirling currents of phantasmagoric orientalist conceits, masonic illuminism and the literary romantic gothicism of the 18th century Count Jan Potocki's 'The Manuscript Found at Saragossa' presents the reader with an undeniably beguiling feast of outre entertainments unfolding through the journey and adventures of our hapless hero, the young Walloon officer Alphonse Van Worden who stops at the haunted inn, the Venta Quemada, on his way to take up his military post at Madrid. With Alphonse we plunge into a weird and labyrinthine world of tales nested within tales like an eccentric Chinese puzzle, delectable stories of ghosts, courtesans, skeletons, hermits, brigands, inquisitors, noblemen, Moors, kabbalists, gypsies, smugglers and libertines. We trace the strange narratives and roles of such characters as the demoniac Pacheko, the exasperating yet strangely helpful Don Busqueros who torments the young lover Lope Suarez, the satanic figure of Don Belial with his mephistophelean discourses, the Knight of Toledo and many others for this book truly teems with wonders and mysteries, like a weird mirror or microcosm. And equally delightful is Potocki's symbolic sensibility as he weaves leitmotivs throughout the book, serpents, skulls, the two hanged men and the two beautiful Moorish sisters Emina and Zubeida who veritably haunt the narrator, implore him to convert to Islam and marry them both and give him a strange philtre to quaff from a cup of carven emerald that he may enjoy their charms in the dream-state - only to wake up kissing the rotting face of a cadaver beneath the gallows! Some scholars have suggested that Potocki deliberately wove symbols from the Tarot throughout this novel - along with a plethora of bizarre, ghostly, erotic and grotesque motifs and episodes.... Read more ›
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a real gem! Interlaced stories, all very fascinating, with all the ingredients of good storytelling. The author was among other things a historian, so the book is set in a more or less correct historical context of the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century. Add intriguing stories of love, struggle to get a place in society, and a fair bit of supernatural elements to the basic mix, and you get this book. Don't miss it!
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Long forgotten this bizarre picaresque novel of the mid 19th century is worth exploring. Written by a Pole about Spain around 150 years ago it is full of insights - literary, historical and religious - into the time. Very odd, but highly imaginative.
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
Definitely one of the best books ever written - it's funny, erudite, exciting, scary - everything you need.
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By H. Tee
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is basically a series of short stories written in 1813 in French by the Polish Potocki and to be fair the other reviewers have encapsulated the book. The setting is early 1730s Spain and embraces themes of romanticism, religion (Muslim/Christian/Pagan) and ghost stories. The main character is Alphonse who starts off detailing his journey into the backlands and has 66 chapters (days); he meets hanged brothers, dodgy sisters, ghosts, women/loves, wandering Jew, gypsy leader etc. Each starts their first person tale which invariable introduces a new person who tells their tale - this (honestly) leads to a confusing 5 level first person narrative i.e. who ever is telling is `I' throughout the entire text. The text even has an interim character telling us `they are losing the thread' of who's talking - this is ironic and apt. To compensate the Penguin version does have a good introduction, character list and the pages enclosing their stories - I did wonder if the whole book might have benefited from being edited to be just each person's story in sequence.
This book has been compared to the Decameron and 1000 & 1 Nights; and described as gothic, picaresque, adventurous, erotic. Whatever the good qualities of these descriptions may be in summarising this novel, this novel is not as good as you may think - it is long 630 small font pages, completely unmemorable, disjointed, difficult, unimaginative and (oh dear another review where I resort to the word) boring - I nearly again gave up and at the end remember nothing about the stories. When you start to lose family connections, histories and names (as I did) the stories lose meaning and impact; I wondered why I bothered.... Read more ›
This book has been compared to the Decameron and 1000 & 1 Nights; and described as gothic, picaresque, adventurous, erotic. Whatever the good qualities of these descriptions may be in summarising this novel, this novel is not as good as you may think - it is long 630 small font pages, completely unmemorable, disjointed, difficult, unimaginative and (oh dear another review where I resort to the word) boring - I nearly again gave up and at the end remember nothing about the stories. When you start to lose family connections, histories and names (as I did) the stories lose meaning and impact; I wondered why I bothered.... Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
This book is French!
A perfectly good translation but I bought it under the mistaken impression that Potocki had written in Polish. Wrong. Read more
Published on 11 Aug 2006 by Melisande
2.0 out of 5 stars
200 year old gothic horror erotica
'TMFAS' is a picaresque novel set in an apparently haunted Andalusian valley in the mid-eighteenth century. Read more
Published on 24 April 2006 by Depressaholic
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