Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1425235 in Books
• Published on: 1993-07-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 181 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Written in the style of an 18th-century adventure, Perutz's leisurely tale of switched identities and reversals of fortune concerns a nameless thief fleeing the gallows who crosses paths in 1701 with a noble-born deserter from the Swedish army. The brazen thief betrays the nobleman, Christian von Tornefeld, by assuming his identity while on an errand, then taking over his cousin's manorial estate in Silesia and marrying his young, adoring fiancee Maria, who believes that the imposter is von Tornefeld. Meanwhile, Christian takes the thief's promised job, enduring nine hellish years as a foundry worker. Moments of high drama and broad comedy enliven the tale, which takes a number of twists before the two men meet on the road years later to exchange identities once again, a move that proves fatal for both. Prague-born novelist Perutz ( Little Apple ), who fled the Nazis to Palestine and died in 1957, spins an allegory that implicitly asks: If God is just, why do evil and injustice flourish? Brownjohn's deft translation captures a rough-and-tumble milieu saturated with superstitions, spells and folk customs.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
When a young nobleman deserts from the Swedish army, a thief steals his identity and tricks him into servitude in the bishop's lime kilns. The thief then leads a gang that steals gold from churches throughout the Silesian countryside. He emerges (with ample money) as the Swedish cavalier, pays off the debt on the aristocrat's family estate, and weds the beautiful cousin who has not seen her fiance since childhood and doesn't realize she's marrying an impostor. But the thief's new comfort is endangered when his old gang returns, one step ahead of the hangman. His plotting enables him to escape with his life, but he finds himself condemned to a living hell. Though Perutz died in 1957, his fiction's unique blend of history and the fantastic place it in the vanguard of its genre. This latest translation (following Little Apple , LJ 4/1/92) continues Arcade's laudable commitment to publishing this exceptional writer in English. Highly recommended.
- Paul E. Hutchison, Bellefonte, Pa.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
From Czech-Austrian writer Perutz (Saint Peter's Snow, 1992, etc.), a story that typically explores a big question--the meaning of identity--in that bleak East European landscape that the author has made his own. Here, Perutz takes the troubled memories of a much-admired 18th-century beauty, Maria Christine, who recalls being secretly visited nightly by her father, who was supposedly off fighting with the Swedish army, and turns them into a riveting tale of adventure with moral undertones. When a thief (known locally as ``fowl- filcher'') meets the young Swedish Cavalier Christian von Tornfeld, who has impetuously deserted from the army, the two struggle to survive in the bleak wintery countryside. Cold and hungry, they shelter in a derelict old mill, home to a ghostly miller believed to be in league with the devil. The mill is near the hellish mining-pits owned by a greedy local bishop who brutally beats the men who work for him. On a foray from the mill, the thief visits a tumbledown estate owned by a young woman who's being cheated out of her inheritance. Once back at the mill, he learns that Christian had been engaged in childhood to this very girl. Using guile and magic, the thief persuades Christian to give him his signet ring and his talismanic Bible, as well as to work in the mines to avoid execution for his desertion. The thief goes on to lead a band of thieves (the ``Desecrators'') who rob churches; and then having amassed enough money, he presents himself to the young girl as her long-lost Swedish Cavalier. They marry; he uses his money to restore the estate; a daughter is born. But when threatened with betrayal by a fellow Desecrator, he announces to his family that he must rejoin the Swedish army--a ruse that leads to his daughter's confusion and his own redemption. As much a gothic tale with a message as a good literate page- turner. Vintage Perutz. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.