The Betrothed (Penguin Pocket Classics)

Description

'I pity this house; the curse of God is hanging over it'. Set in Lombardy during the Spanish occupation of the late 1620s, The Betrothed tells the story of two young lovers, Renzo and Lucia, prevented from marrying by the petty tyrant Don Rodrigo, who desires Lucia for himself. Forced to flee, they are then cruelly separated, and must face many dangers including plague, famine and imprisonment, and confront a variety of strange characters - the mysterious Nun of Monza, the fiery Father Cristoforo and the sinister 'Unnamed' - in their struggle to be reunited. With a vigorous portrayal of enduring passion, the Betrothed's exploration of love, power and faith presents a whirling panorama of seventeenth-century Italian life and is one of the greatest European historical novels. It is a new series of twenty distinctive, unforgettable Penguin Classics in a beautiful new design and pocket-sized format, with coloured jackets echoing Penguin's original covers.

Reviews

It is a corker of a book, twisting and turning, and shows the novel at a strange pass between the romance and Gothic impetus of the previous century and the psychological realism of the coming one. -- Jerome de Groot History Today [The Betrothed] promises to be the commencement of a new style in novel writing -- Edgar Allan Poe