Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts
My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Great, Flawed Man "Adieu Josephine. A thousand daggers stab my heart, do not plunge them in deeper. Adieu, my happiness, my life, all that had any real existence for me on this earth." Napoleon wrote many love letters like that to his wife when he was off on campaign, busily annexing and reorganizing much of Italy after 300+ years of Austrian dominion. One of the interesting things about Andrew Roberts' Napoleon: A Life (2014) is Napoleon's ability (or need) to compartmentalize his life, so that one moment he'd be writing melodramatic letters to Josephine, the next leading his French army to another military victory over allied European powers or installing a new legal system based on equality before the law or discussing literature or philosophy or science with the leading savants of his era. In his biography Roberts covers Napoleon's achievements as a general, 53 victories in 60 battles via influential tactics, and as a statesman, promoting meritocracy, improving infrastructure, reforming education, and implementing the Napoleonic Code still present to some extent in the legal systems of 40 countries today. "Even if Napoleon hadn't been one of the great military geniuses of history, he would still be a giant of the modern era." Roberts details aspects of Napoleon's character like his boundless energy, hands-on micromanaging, wide-ranging interests, sense of humor, and forgiveness of enemies (and of feckless siblings). He reveals Napoleon's private life, his intense relationship with Josephine and calmer one with Marie Louise, and his affairs. He conveys Napoleon's charisma, which got so many men to follow him as if on a grand adventure to make history. Roberts wants to correct the image painted by other historians of Napoleon that he was a war-loving tyrant who sacrificed myriad people and upset the world to satisfy his ambitions, pointing out that other countries declared war on him more often than he on them and that many of his callous comments vis-à-vis the lives of soldiers were taken out of context or fabricated. Perhaps at times Roberts tries too hard to put us in Napoleon's camp by using words like "Luckily, …" or "Unfortunately, . . ." to introduce sentences referring to developments that helped or harmed Napoleon and his aims. Anyway, Roberts successfully demonstrates that "What brought Napoleon down was not some deep-seated personality disorder but a combination of unforeseeable circumstances coupled with a handful of significant miscalculations: something altogether more believable, human and fascinating." Roberts' book begins with Napoleon's Corsican family history and youth, moves through his meteoric rise during the chaotic era of the French Revolution to become General, First Consul, and then Emperor, and ends with his forced abdication in 1814, his return from Elba, and his defeat at Waterloo and death on St. Helena. The ending is appalling, not because of the fall from power and empire or the awful living conditions on St. Helena, but because Napoleon died a slow, degrading, and painful death from stomach cancer. After all, even men who transform and rule the world only do so temporarily and are made of clay like us all. Roberts says that writing the biography took him longer than Napoleon spent on Elba and St. Helena combined. He read the accounts of people who knew and liked or hated Napoleon, Napoleon's autobiography (with a large dose of salt), and his myriad letters, 1/3 of which had recently become available for the first time. Roberts also takes into account the European historical political contexts of the late 18th- and early 19th-centuries. He visited 53 of Napoleon's 60 battlefields to get a sense of the challenges the terrain presented, and to make his history more immediate often says things like, "It [a key bridge] was about 15 yards upstream from today's bridge." Roberts' biography features plenty of Napoleonic Age warfare. Interesting details on weaponry (e.g., lightweight and powerful artillery) and tactics (e.g., mobile corps and combined arms attacks) and the impact their development had on war (as Napoleon's enemies learned to use his innovations against him). Not to mention casualties, disease, morale, provisioning, propaganda, spying, communications, leadership, and more. The wealth of pre-battle information regarding the names of generals and numbers of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, etc. can get a little boring, but the accounts of battles are suspenseful and full of vivid details, like a Russian soldier saying after Borodino that he had had to keep his mouth open through the entire battle to normalize air pressure in his ear amid the continuous percussive artillery and musket fire (at least 3 cannonballs and 77 musket balls were fired per second). Roberts at times may try a bit too hard to make us understand such warfare: "The combined losses are the equivalent of a fully laden jumbo jet crashing into an area of six square miles, every five minutes for the whole ten hours of the battle, killing or wounding everyone on board." John Lee reads the audiobook with the John Lee Rhythm, which tends to make all his books sound like they're written by the same person. He does have a great voice, precise pronunciation, and lively energy and intelligence. The audiobook lacks the books illustrations maps, and footnotes. Anyone interested in history should like this book. It draws on recently available letters and presents an absorbing and balanced account of Napoleon's life and times, and has witty and fine writing: "Ironically, although it was to get an imperial heir that Napoleon divorced Josephine, it would turn out to be her grandson, rather than any offspring of Napoleon's, who would become the next emperor of France, and her direct descendents who today sit on the thrones of Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Luxemburg. His sit on none." View all my reviews
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From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Teamwork and Secrets in the Metropolitan Museum of Art E. L. Konigsberg's From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1967) has one of the best concepts of any children's novel and some of the best dialogue between kid siblings to boot. It's a compact, absorbing, funny, moving, and enriching read. It deserves its Newbery Medal. Eleven-year-old (twelve next month) Claudia Kincaid has decided to run away from home for a few reasons: injustice (she has "to both empty the dishwasher and set the table on the same night while her brothers got out of everything"), lack of appreciation (her parents need a lesson in "Claudia appreciation"), and boredom (she's a straight-A student in need of an adventure). She's already figured out her destination, somewhere large, indoors, and beautiful: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. For her companion in absconding she recruits one of her little brothers, Jamie, nine, because he's funny and he's rich; he hordes his weekly allowance and cheats at the card game War with his best friend and so has $24.43. Combined with Claudia's $4.18, they should have enough (in today's money, that would be about seven times more). She flatters him into going with her ("I've picked you to accompany me on the greatest adventure of our mutual lives") and mollifies him when he thinks they should hide out in Central Park instead of the "sissy" Met by appointing him treasurer of their venture. A wrinkle in the above concept is that a rich old woman, Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, has written the story we're reading to explain to her lawyer Saxonberg why she's altering her will. What the connection is between the kids and Mrs. Frankweiler and how she came to know about their adventure are secrets she’s in no hurry to divulge. She sprinkles her narrative with acerbic addresses to Saxonberg, taking him to task for instance for having never paid attention to anything other than laws, taxes, and his grandchildren, and hence for never having visited the Met. The details of how the kids take up residence in the Met (how they avoid the staff, where they sleep, how they bathe, what they eat, what they do during the days, etc.) are mostly believable and always fun, and when, early on, they embark on a quest to solve the mystery of the provenance of a beautiful and popular statue of an angel that may have been sculpted by Michelangelo, the novel gains an added depth. Claudia desperately wants to discover the truth behind the statue because she desperately wants to return to her Greenwich home "different" than when she left. For his part, Jamie likes complications, so he's usually game for whatever Claudia wants to do--though being a "tightwad" treasurer he refuses to let her take a bus or a taxi anywhere. Konigsberg incorporates into the book plenty of enticing details of the Met, including its floor plan (some thirty years ago my wife organized our own trip to the museum and its city after reading the novel). And she interests the reader in art with a deft touch for the apt and appealing detail: "(Now, Saxonberg, I must tell you about that Egyptian tomb called a mastaba. It is not a whole one; it is the beginning of one. You can walk into it. You can spend a lot of time in it, or you can spend very little time in it. You can try to read the picture writing on the walls. Or you can read nothing at all. Whether you read or not, whether you spend a lot of time or a little in that piece of Ancient Egypt, you will have changed climate for at least that part of your day.)" Konigsberg is a witty writer, as in this description of an irate Jamie: "He was in no mood to listen to Claudia. He slumped in his seat with his lips pooched out and his eyebrows pulled down on top of his eyes. He looked like a miniature, clean-shaven Neanderthal man." Part of the pleasure of the novel comes from the comical banter between the precocious siblings: "Jamie," she whispered," what's all that racket?" Jamie stopped, and so did the racket. "What racket?" he demanded. "You," she said. "You are the racket. What in the world are you wearing? Chain mail?" "I'm just wearing my usual. Starting from the bottom, I have B. V. D. briefs, size ten, one tee shirt…" "Oh, for goodness' sake, I know all that. What are you wearing that makes so much noise?" "Twenty-four dollars and forty-three cents." "How come all your money is in change? It rattles." "Bruce pays off in pennies and nickels. What did you expect him to pay me in? Traveler's checks?" Despite regularly bickering, the kids bond into a team. They complement each other: "She was cautious (about everything but money); he was adventurous (about everything but money)." And at times they even compliment each other, as when Jamie realizes that the 16th-century bed they commandeer in the Met was the site of a murder. "You know, Claude, for a sister and a fussbudget, you're not too bad" and "You know, Jamie, for a brother and a cheapskate, you're not too bad." Sharing their adventure--being away from home and alone together in the 20 acres of the Met and on the trail of a mystery--makes them come to a new appreciation of each another. Really Jamie and Claudia are a bit too articulate for their ages, as when a surprised guard asks Jamie, "Where did you come from?" and he replies, "Mother always says that I come from Heaven." And when they take to calling each other Sir James and Lady Claudia and assume formal airs (and Jamie says things like, "Where, dear Lady Claudia, dost thou expect to bathe?"), things gets a bit too precious and unconvincing. And Konigsberg reveals one secret too many in the end . . . But it's a great read and should increase the interest of child and adult readers in art, make them appreciate secrets (which “make you different. On the inside where it counts”), and teach them about learning (about letting what you've learned fill you up till it touches every part of you). View all my reviews
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars Absorbing, Appalling, Necessary When I was about eleven I saw a fat paperback copy of William L. Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960) on my parents' bedside table. I opened it and was stunned by its many pages densely packed with tiny difficult words. Then I found the photographs and gazed with a weird fascination at the fascist uniforms--until the mounds of nude Jewish concentration camp corpses seared my retinas before I could shut the book. Ever since, I kept a wary distance from Shirer's tome, fearing that it'd be too heavy, too long, too disturbing, until finally, 45 years later, I listened to the audiobook. The ever-professional Grover Gardner reads it in his clear and accurate voice--assuming no German or other accents--and enabled me to survive the 57+ hours of listening time. It is an absorbing, appalling, necessary book--reminding us of how horrible people can be to each other and how in times of chaos and distress people are willing to cede their autonomy to nationalist fascist leaders. Drawing on hundreds of tons and hundreds of thousands of documents (diaries, speeches, telephone conversations, conference reports, military files, etc.) made available from 1955, as well as on documents assembled for the Nuremberg trials and on books by other surviving eye witnesses and key players in many of the events, etc., Shirer is at pains to be, if not exhaustive (which would be impossible for a single person writing a single book), thorough--and objective--in his history. (Grover Gardner reads all of Shirer's many footnotes identifying his sources.) Every history makes you ponder What Ifs, Shirer's probably more than most. More than once one thinks (or Shirer says), 'History might have taken a different turn, if . . .' If Hitler's grandfather had not late in life acknowledged an illegitimate son so as to make Hitler Hitler and not Schicklegruber. If Hitler had been killed in WWI. If President Hindenberg had not made Hitler Chancellor. If the Reichstag had not voted to give Hitler dictatorial power. If France had immediately kicked the puny German army out of the demilitarized Rhineland. If Chamberlain had appeased less. If Great Britain and France had made a pact with Stalin before Germany did. If one of the anti-Hitler conspiracies had acted or if one of the plots against his life had succeeded. And so on. Shirer is less interested in battle details, tactics, and accounts than in diplomacy, psychology, culture, and communications. Despite saying, 'It was rarely easy . . . to penetrate the strange and fantastic workings of Hitler's fevered mind,' Shirer really does lay it bare. Some readers may feel exhausted (if not bored) by some of the many behind the scenes diplomatic maneuverings. But he is a witty writer, with an eye and ear for the savory phrase and detail: 'It was as if the President of the United States, the Pope, and the rulers of the small Northern European democracies lived on a different planet from that of the Third Reich and had no more understanding of what was going on in Berlin than of what might be transpiring on Mars.' As an American correspondent stationed in Germany and Europe, Shirer attended many of Hitler's public speeches and was present in Vienna for the Anschluss and in France for the humiliating armistice. He draws on his own diary entries and memories, as in a potent description of Hitler addressing the Reichstag: 'Now the six hundred deputies, personal appointees all of Hitler, little men with big bodies and bulging necks and cropped hair and pouched bellies and brown uniforms and heavy boots. . . leap to their feet like automatons, their right arms upstretched in the Nazi salute, and scream 'Heils'. . . Hitler raises his hand for silence. . . He says in a deep, resonant voice, 'Men of the German Reichstag!' The silence is utter.' As is evident from that passage, Shirer's biases sometimes surface, but they are usually entertaining rather than off-putting. I enjoyed, for instance, his caustic epithets, like 'the Baltic dolt' for Rosenberg, 'the one-time Vienna vagabond' or 'the demoniac dictator' for Hitler, 'the mild-mannered former chicken farmer' for Himmler, 'the strutting fascist Caesar' for Mussolini, and so on. Shirer does make a few homophobic asides that date his book, like equating SA homosexuals and murderers and saying, 'They quarreled and feuded as only men of unnatural sexual inclinations with their peculiar jealousies can.' Another thing that dates Shirer's history and reveals some bias is that he doesn't seem to think much of female contributions to history. He calls a female pilot hanging out in Hitler's bunker near the end, 'the aviatrix,' and paints her account 'lurid.' He mentions Eva Braun and Magda Goebbels only briefly in the last chapter. If Eva did nothing of historical interest, Magda sure did, according to a 2017 French documentary I just watched. And perhaps Shirer places Hitler too dramatically in the context of the German mind and culture, as when he explains that Wagner's Ring Cycle, which gave Nazis their mythology, ends 'in the Goterdamerung, twilight of the gods, as Valhalla, set on fire by Wotan. . . goes up in flames in an orgy of self-willed annihilation, which has always fascinated the German mind and answered some terrible longing in the German soul.' The Germany of Angela Merkel today seems different. . . Finally, anyone interested in learning about what happened to enable the Final Solution and the ravaging of the world during World War II should read this book. There are more up to date histories, but probably no other American writer who had personal experience of many of the key figures and events during Hitler's rise to power has written anything as thorough and compelling as Shirer's book. And when one reads of Hitler promising to make Germany strong again, the resonance with Trump promising to make America great again should cause a pause for reflection. View all my reviews
Borders of Infinity by Lois McMaster Bujold
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Three Strong Novellas, One Weak Frame Story The Borders of Infinity (1989) collects three novellas from Miles Vorkosigan's early days, connecting them via a framing 'story,' in which Miles is recovering from one of his many surgeries to repair/replace his brittle broken bones, this time in both his arms. Simon Illyan, chief of Barrayaran Imperial Security, visits Miles to get to the bottom of some dodgy accounting for some of Miles' covert operations with the Dendari Mercenaries, for a political enemy of Aral Vorkosigan would like to get at the great man through his son and is working to reveal Miles to be an embezzler of Imperial money. The three novellas, then, are supposedly Miles' explanations of unexplained cost overruns. The first novella is the painful, moving 'The Mountains of Mourning' (1989). Here 20-year-old Miles is a new ensign on leave after graduating from the Imperial Service Academy when he's assigned by his Count father to solve a case of infanticide and then to administer justice in a backwater hill village of his family district. No matter how difficult, Miles must do the right thing, for his district, for his empire, for his father--and for the dead baby. And it is a personal case because baby Raina's neck was broken for being a 'mutant' (whose 'mutation' was really only a treatable harelip), while Miles is viewed as a 'mutant' by too many Barrayarans (even his own grandfather tried to kill him when he was a baby). Miles finds his raison d'etre: 'Peace to you, small lady, he thought to Raina. You've won a twisted poor modern knight, to wear your favor on his sleeve. But it's a twisted poor world we were both born into, that rejects us without mercy and ejects us without consultation. At least I won't just tilt at windmills for you. I'll send in sappers to mine the twirling suckers, and blast them into the sky.' 'Labyrinth' (1989), the second novella, presents Miles at 23 in his alter-ego as Admiral Naismith, the leader of the Dendarii Mercenaries (covertly working for the Barrayaran Empire as Miles is really a Lieutenant in Imperial Security). The Dendarii have come to Jackson's Whole, the planet run by crime syndicate Houses (capitalism on steroids). The mission is simple: buy weapons from House Fell, pick up a geneticist defector from House Bharaputra, and quietly leave. Miles being Miles, things get complicated, involving House Ryoval (infamous for producing exotic sex slaves), a quaddie (four-armed) musician, a genetically engineered giant fanged super soldier (who's also a lonely, insecure 16-year-old girl), and Miles' own conflicting senses of chivalry and pragmatics and loyalties to his mercenaries and to his Emperor. Plenty of neat lines like 'God. He remembered sixteen. Sex-obsessed and dying inside every minute.' Plenty of compelling character development like Miles and Taura proving their humanity to each other. My only complaint is that Bujold does the hermaphrodite Dendari Captain Bel Thorne a disservice by--despite the neutral pronoun 'it' used to refer to Bel--making it male when attracted to a woman and female when attracted to a man rather than writing her as an ever exotic 'it' composed equally of both genders or partaking of neither. In the last novella, 'The Borders of Infinity' (1987), young Miles is still living his dual life as Barrayaran ImpSec Lieutenant and Dendarii Admiral Naismith when, in a rather too Captain Kirk-like way he has himself inserted alone into a hellish POW prison camp run by Cetagandans. His mission is to arrange the rescue of a war-hero human colonel, but the prison is inside a hermetically sealed and impermeable dome, the 10,214 prisoners are demoralized and disorganized, and immediately upon entry Miles is beaten and stripped naked by camp thugs. Now he must execute the mission with only his mind and charisma--and an imaginary hat to hide his privates with when dealing with female prisoners! This one is great up till the climax, which could use more cat and mouse between Miles and the Cetagandan wardens and less deus ex machina. The novella does have plenty of neat lines, like 'When you can see the color of the [imaginary hat's] feathers. . . . you'll also understand how you can expand your borders to infinity.' Audiobook reader Grover Gardner is his usual appealing, professional, Vorkosigan self here. Perfect. About that frame 'story' . . . it's unnecessary and contrived and skimpy. Nothing really happens in it apart from Miles supposedly telling Simon the three novellas (so as to explain the suspicious accounting) and talking a bit with his mother. I can't believe that formidable ImpSec head Simon wouldn't already have known the complete details by now. And in the first story Miles used his own graduation money instead of Empire funds, so it would seem to have no connection with the accounting business anyway. Furthermore, though Miles is supposedly telling Simon what happened in the three cases, the stories are narrated in the third person, albeit limited to his point of view, because that's how Bujold wrote them before, apparently, thinking to publish them together in this edition. Because the three stories are fine early Miles fare, I recommend them to fans of Bujold's series--but I wish she'd published them together without the frame. View all my reviews
Son by Lois Lowry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars Empathy with the Devil, or "A Mum Always Loves Her Child" The final member of Lois Lowry's Giver Quartet, Son (2012), is a recapitulation of the main genres of the earlier three novels, being itself comprised of three 'books,' the first an sf dystopia like The Giver (1993), the second a post-apocalypse story like Gathering Blue (2000), and the third a Christian allegory like Messenger (2004). Son is the capstone to the Quartet, but Lowry includes in it enough backstory from the first three works to ensure that readers new to her series can understand this one on its own. 'Book One: Before' begins about a year before the events of The Giver, and depicts the appalling emotional and reproductive control that the community Elders exercise over their people. Claire is an innocent 14-year-old girl who's been assigned to be a 'Birthmother' without being told what it entails. Like all 'Productions' in the community, hers is achieved artificially. This ensures more control over reproduction and is necessary anyway because the emotion-suppressing medication everyone must take at the onset of puberty makes sexual and other love impossible. During deliveries the 'Vessels' are blindfolded to prevent them from seeing their 'Products.' Claire's difficult delivery requires her doctors to cut her belly open, and she realizes that they care more for the Product than for the Vessel. Because of such complications, Claire is decertified as Birthmother and assigned a new career in the Fish Hatchery. There is no question of her seeing her Product, because this is never done. Due to an oversight by the Elders in charge of her case, Claire does not go back on her medication and thus feels a deep loss, sadness, and loneliness. Occasionally volunteering at the Nurturing Center, she is able to spend some precious time with her Product, her boy, number 36--concealing that she is his mother. This is the best section in the novel: devastating. 'Book Two: Between' depicts Claire ending up in a small, unindustrialized fishing village, learning there about seasons, precipitation, colors, animals, illness, and love (none of which were present in her old community), resolving to find her son, and undergoing (with the guidance of a sweet, lame young man) intense physical training to become able to attempt to climb a forbidding cliff to leave the fishing village. If successful, she'll have to decide whether or not to make an appalling bargain with the satanic Trademaster from Messenger. This is the second-best section: compelling. 'Book Three: Beyond' is narrated from the point of view of 15-year-old or so Gabe in the Village of Messenger as he works on his pet project, making a boat in which to sail back to the community that Jonas rescued him from 14 or so years ago, all to find his Birthmother, who, unbeknownst to him is in Village watching him with a 'fierce, knowing intimacy.' Jonas, who can see Beyond, senses Trademaster malevolently monitoring Gabe. Will Gabe be able to mature into a sun of a son? Son, like the quartet as a whole, then, morphs away from a political or social exploration of dystopia into an allegory of human nature confronting evil while being enriched by love, especially maternal love. This is the third-best section: too obviously and easily allegorical. Does Son bring the quartet together and conclude it satisfyingly? Yes--but I found it less ambiguous than The Giver, less absorbing than Gathering Blue, less eucatasrophic than Messenger, and less tight than the previous three novels. Lowry summarizes a bit more of the first part in the second and third parts than is necessary. And like most YA (still today) her novel lacks people of color and different sexual orientations and after all ends up rather conservatively regarding gender with a Son rather than a Daughter. (Indeed, despite the presence of strong Kira in Gathering Blue and Claire here, the saviors and leaders of Lowry's quartet are male.) There are also some things that don't hold together so well. It's hard to believe that Jonas' high tech community would not have made more of an impact on the less developed communities or vice versa. Given their close relationship in The Giver, I'd expect Jonas and Gabe to be living together in Village (even if when Jonas showed up with Gabe he didn't think he was mature enough to raise a baby). Perhaps plot is overruling character here. Mind you, Son is a strong novel! Lowry avoids typical YA moves like romantic triangles, violent action scenes, and obvious punishments for villains. I like Gabe calming a stormy river by saying, 'I cannot kill.' I like the supernatural gifts of the main characters being less about power and more about insight. (Gabe's gift is 'veering,' an extreme form of empathy.) She depicts flawed but essentially good people we care about. She excels at dramatic irony, as with Gabe's burning desire to go find his mother when she's living in Village with him. Bernadette Dunne reads the audiobook perfectly. Apart from doing a creepy malevolent Trademaster, she doesn't change her voice dramatically for characters of different genders or ages or cultures, but just imbues each character's voice with the appropriate emotions and agendas etc. for each moment. Readers of the first three books MUST read this last one, and though I still think The Giver should have been left to stand alone in its austere ambiguity--I am glad to have read all of the quartet, filled as it is of limpid writing, appealing characters, moving stories, and serious themes. View all my reviews |
Jefferson Peters
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by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
"It must be due to some fault in ourselves"--
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an anti-totalitarian-communist allegory in which the exploited animals of the Manor Farm kick Farmer Jones out and set about running the farm. At first...
by Lu Xun
Perfect Stories of Life in Early 20th Century China
Chinese Classic Stories (1998) by Xun Lu is an excellent collection of seven short stories by perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese writer of fiction. Lu Xun (1881-1936) stu...
Fine Writing, Great Characters, Immersive World
The Surgeon's Mate (1980) is the 7th novel in Patrick O'Brian's addicting series of age of sail novels about the lives, loves, and careers of the British navy captain Jack Aubrey and the ...
An Overwritten, Oddly Compelling Gothic Father
Matthew Lewis' notorious and influential Gothic novel The Monk (1796) takes place during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Ambrosio, the monk/friar/abbot/idol of Madrid, is nicknamed ...
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