Cathedral of the Sea
- Authors
- Ildefonso Falcones
- Publisher
- Penguin Group USA
- Tags
- spain - history - 711-1516 , design and construction , social classes - spain - barcelona , christian , barcelona (spain) , cathedrals , barcelona (spain) - history , fiction , historical fiction , historical fiction; spanish , spain , spain - social life and customs , church buildings , feudalism - spain , feudalism , historical , thrillers , social classes , domestic fiction , santa maria del mar (church: barcelona; spain) , church buildings - spain - barcelona - design and construction , general
- ISBN
- 9780451225993
- Date
- 2009-04-06T23:00:00+00:00
- Size
- 0.70 MB
- Lang
- en
From Publishers WeeklyMedieval Spain's caste system can't keep a good man down in this absorbing epic, a Spanish-language bestseller. 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. 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 is a kindhearted, somewhat passive figure who combines piety, industry and cosmopolitanism to challenge a corrupt, dogmatic church and a parasitic nobility. The plot features thwarted romance, war, plague, immolations and self-immolations, set in a Machiavellian world ruled by privilege, cronyism and brute force. The melodrama is sometimes laid on thick, but Falcones's rich portrait of medieval society is fascinating. (Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review“Believable and enthralling...so beautifully structured that the last sixty pages detonate like a string of firecrackers.” —_The Washington Post_
“An absorbing epic...Falcones’s rich portrait of medieval society is fascinating.”—_Publishers Weekly_