![]() ![]() It makes me realize how young my own country (USA) is, and how, by comparison, Barcelona is rich in history and culture. The history of Barcelona is amazing! I realize this book is historic fiction, but its dates are rooted in fact, and so are the events it’s built on. The melodrama is sometimes laid on thick, but Falcones's rich portrait of medieval society is fascinating. The plot features thwarted romance, war, plague, immolations and self-immolations, set in a Machiavellian world ruled by privilege, cronyism and brute force. Arnau is a kindhearted, somewhat passive figure who combines piety, industry and cosmopolitanism to challenge a corrupt, dogmatic church and a parasitic nobility. Alas, his dizzying social assent and defiance of the feudal order provoke enraged aristocrats his status-obsessed wife included into siccing the Inquisition on him. ![]() ![]() ![]() Arnau Estanyol, son of a fugitive peasant, starts out in 14th-century Barcelona as a lowly porter who carries stone blocks to a cathedral construction site and ends up a rich moneylender who saves the city from pillaging and frees the serfs of a barony he acquires by marriage. Medieval Spain's caste system can't keep a good man down in this absorbing epic, a Spanish-language bestseller. ![]()
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