In a Dark Wood Wandering: A Novel of the Middle Ages

Description

Set in the fifteenth century during the Hundred Years War between France and England, Hella Haasse's epic masterpiece brilliantly captures all the drama of one of the great ages of history. The novel's larger-than-life characters move across a panoramic tapestry woven together by criss-crossed bloodlines and intense rivalries. There is the mad king Charles VI and his heartless Bavarian wife Isabeau; the King's dashing brother Louis, Duke of Orleans; his sensitive Italian Duchess, Valentine, and their son Charles, who inherits a ferocious feud with the powerful and scheming Duke of Burgundy. There is also Louis' bastard son Dunois who becomes the right arm of Joan of Arc, and the English kings: Richard II; Henry IV, and Henry V, the brilliant architect of the English army, who changes the face of war at the battle of Agincourt. First published in the Netherlands in 1949, and never out of print, In a Dark Wood Wandering has sold more than 100,000 copies.

Helene 'Hella' Serafia Haasse (1918-2011) was a Dutch writer, often referred to as the 'Grande Dame' of Dutch literature. The author of seventeen novels as well as poetry, plays and essays, Haasse received numerous honours and awards during her lifetime, including the Netherlands State Award for Literature. Her books have been translated into many languages, including English, French, German, Swedish, Italian and Hungarian.

[Haasse] has a gift for painting banquets, battles and great ceremonial meetings; these set-pieces glow from the text like rich old oils, ducky and mellow * Washington Post * Marvelous... Haasse's panorama shows us how great events are experienced by believably human people * USA Today * Starkly depicts not only an individual and a culture in crisis, but also compellingly reflects one age in another * Chicago Tribune * This splendid book exemplifies the distant, yet poignantly resonant voices of fifteenth-century French court society * New York Times Book Review * Written with a sure grasp of history, storytelling, and human nature * Cleveland Plain Dealer *