For over a century, Lion Feuchtwanger (1884–1958) has remained one of the world's most popular German authors. His body of work represents one of the zeniths of the historical novel genre. A true master, Feuchtwanger possesses a rare talent for creating compelling narratives while immersing the reader deeply and in great detail in the intricacies of historical events. Feuchtwanger never depicts history for its own sake: any one of his novels is always a subtle and precise observation—one that invites reflection or debate—of the underlying processes that have governed the course of human life in the past and continue to govern it in any age.
This collection includes one of Feuchtwanger's most powerful, gripping, and poetic novels, "The Spanish Ballad" (1954), as well as his early novel "The Ugly Duchess" (1923). The action of the first takes place in 12th-century Castile, and the second in 14th-century Tyrol; however, both hide within their captivating plots a discourse on the human personality and the search for one's place in a society governed by prescriptions and stereotypes—a discourse made all the more poignant by the fact that the central roles in both books are given to women who find the constraints of their assigned place in medieval society too narrow.
Translation: Galina Potapova, Vera Stanevich, Vera Akhtyrskaya, Boris Kovalev
Pages: 736 (offset). Hardcover
Dimensions: 218x147x34 mm
Series: Foreign Literature. Big Books
