| ||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Product Description
JONATHAN LEVI, Los Angeles Times
Book Description
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Enquist brilliantly recreates the psychology of the king, a puppet who desperately wants to please the courtiers and officials and is tormented when he does not, a bright but "ravaged child," who from his earliest years was regularly flogged, ridiculed, beaten for casual conversations, forcibly separated from everyone with whom he developed attachments, shamed, and driven mad by his own courtiers. When he becomes interested in the enlightened ideas of Voltaire and Diderot and is celebrated by these philosophers on a trip around the continent, his nervous and threatened court decides he needs a physician. What they never expect is that the physician they engage, Johann Friedrich Struensee from Germany, will establish a relationship with Christian, share his enlightened ideas, and eventually become the de facto king.
Bursting with dramatic scenes of Machiavellian court intrigue and fear of the Enlightenment, and with powerfully moving scenes of psychological abuse, tenderness, passion, love, and genuine sadness, this novel is stunning! Though the reader knows from the opening pages what the outcome of the court struggle will be, Enquist manages to endow it with an immediacy and tension which totally engage the reader. By focusing on the court, rather than on the populace, he makes the Enlightenment and the revolutions it inspires throughout Europe come alive from a new perspective, and in creating this novel based on history, he brings to life both the sad and abused child-king Christian and Struensee, the enlightened but politically naïve mentor who paid the ultimate price. A beautifully realized novel!
The personal is interwoven with the political. The queen is a complex and sympathetic character, and her mystical and serene relationship with the physician creates an almost magical atmosphere, inevitably destroyed as the forces of reaction gather strength. The physician is beautifully and subtly portrayed - his painful uncertainty and indecision, combined with his idealistic espousal of Enloightenment values, creates a fragile but sympatheic and believable character, who nevertheless remains something of a mystery to the end.
A complex and subtle book, but eminently readable. Highly recommended.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Fiction > Historical
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
