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lisa_emily, September 23, 2011 (view all comments by lisa_emily)
I came across this book while on search for all things fin de siècle Vienna. This book did not fit the bill, I think I was looking for another book by this author; however, I enjoyed reading this book very much. I was surprised, I also was uncertain if the book was based on a real historical event and after reading 2/3 of it; I looked and found that it was. But it is an event that I highly suspect you may not know about: the Serbian May Overthrow of 1903. The end of the House of Obrenović in a coup d’état by the military to assassinate King Alexander and Queen Draga to place Kara�'or�'ević dynasty back on the throne. It’s a pretty complicated story, I could not do it justice here and it took Fagyas around 380 pages to do it. And how well she did. The book is structured with each chapter as an hour leading up to the coup- for almost 24hrs. It seems historically accurate (my fact-checking was with Wiki, not the best I admit) and so she does not seem to take liberties, although the main character Michael Vassilovich does seem to be fictional. And it is through him and his relationship to Draga and to former king Milan that we see and experience this historical shift in Serbia. The characters are humanely drawn without sentimentality or romanticism. The background is given in clear ways without bogging down the narrative. It was much more engaging and emotionally available than reading the account in a history text. The book gives the reader a way to enter a relatively unknown historical event- and even though it was published in ’73, it reads well today.

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Product Details

ISBN:

9780399111181

Publisher:

Putnam

Location:

New York

Subject:

Queens

Subject:

Serbia

Subject:

Biographical fiction

Subject:

Queens -- Yugoslavia -- Serbia -- Fiction.

Series Volume:

18

Publication Date:

1973

Illustrations:

Yes

Pages:

383 p.

Dance of the Assassins M Fagyas Product details 383 p. pages Putnam - - English 9780399111181 Reviews: