Scarpia

ISBN-13: 9781408867518 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 384 str.

Piers Paul Read

Opis

"Piers Paul Read is one of England's most accomplished novelists, and Scarpia is among his finest novels." --The Wall Street JournalIt is the late eighteenth century and Sicilian nobleman Vitellio Scarpia finds himself penniless and in disgrace on the streets of Rome. After leaving his home in pursuit of a military career, his fiery passion has seen him expelled from the Spanish royal guard and left to seek his fortune in Italy; a fortune inseparably bound to the Pope, whose rule is put in question by the French Revolution. Scarpia enrolls in the papal army and is soon taken up by a countess eager to have a handsome young officer at her side. She introduces Scarpia into Roman society, and he is both enthralled and agitated by its mix of religiosity, sophistication, decadence, and intrigue. Then, on a mission to Venice, he meets the gifted, beautiful singer Floria Tosca. And as the armies of revolutionary France advance into Italy, and war and revolution engulf the whole peninsula, these two lives become entwined. Steeped in factual detail and exploring the lives--part historical, part fictional--of figures from Puccini's famous opera Tosca, Scarpia shines a light into dusty corridors of history and dark corners of the human soul.

Recenzje

Piers Paul Read is one of Britain's most intelligent and disturbing writers New York Times Book Review

O autorze

Piers Paul Read is best known for his book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, which documented the story of the 1972 crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 and was adapted into a film in 1993. He has won a number of prizes for his fiction, including the Hawthornden Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.