Synopses & Reviews
It is 1789, and three young provincials have come to Paris to make their way. Georges-Jacques Danton, an ambitious young lawyer, is energetic, pragmatic, debt-ridden--and hugely but erotically ugly. Maximilien Robespierre, also a lawyer, is slight, diligent, and terrified of violence. His dearest friend, Camille Desmoulins, is a conspirator and pamphleteer of genius. A charming gadfly, erratic and untrustworthy, bisexual and beautiful, Camille is obsessed by one woman and engaged to marry another, her daughter. In the swells of revolution, they each taste the addictive delights of power, and the price that must be paid for it.
Review
"Brilliant, edgy historical fiction that catches the jittery, violent flux of the French Revolution."--Michael Upchurch,
Chicago Tribune"Riveting historical novel"--The New Yorker
Review
"Brilliant, edgy historical fiction that catches the jittery, violent flux of the French Revolution."--Michael Upchurch,
Chicago Tribune"Riveting historical novel"--The New Yorker
Review
"Mantel's writing is so exact and brilliant that, in itself, it seems an act of survival, even redemption."--Joan Acocella,
The New Yorker
"More people really need to get with the concept that Mantel is one of the best writers in England." --Zadie Smith, author of On Beauty
"Brilliant, edgy historical fiction that captures the whiplash flux of the French Revolution with crisp immediacy on the page."--The Seattle Times
"An epic of extraordinary detail and depth . . . [it] moves beyond the realm of an absorbing yarn into the arena of a literary masterpiece."--Booklist
Synopsis
The story of three young provincials of no great heritage who together helped to destroy a way of life and, in the process, destroyed themselves: Camille Desmoulins, bisexual and beautiful, charming, erratic, untrustworthy; Georges Jacques Danton, hugely but erotically ugly, a brilliant pragmatist who knew how to seize power and use it; and Maximilien Robespierre, "the rabid lamb," who would send his dearest friend to the guillotine. Each, none older than thirty-four, would die by the hand of the very revolution he had helped to bring into being.
About the Author
Hilary Mantel is the bestselling author of many novels including Wolf Hall, which won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Bring Up the Bodies, Book Two of the Thomas Cromwell Trilogy, was also awarded the Man Booker Prize and the Costa Book Award. She is also the author of A Change of Climate, A Place of Greater Safety, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, An Experiment in Love, The Giant, O'Brien, Fludd, Beyond Black, Every Day Is Mother's Day, and Vacant Possession. She has also written a memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. Mantel was the winner of the Hawthornden Prize, and her reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books. She lives in England with her husband.