Mare Nostrum: A Novel

Description

Mare Nostrum (1918) is a novel by Vicente Blasco Ibanez. Published at the height of his career as a popular Spanish author, Mare Nostrum was adapted into a 1926 silent film by Irish director Rex Ingram starring his American wife Alice Terry, an icon of early cinema. Believed lost for decades, the film has been recently rediscovered and restored. "All that mankind had ever written or dreamed about the Mediterranean, the doctor had in his library and could repeat to his eager little listener. In Ferragut's estimation the mare nostrum ["Mare Nostrum" (Our Sea), the classic name for the Mediterranean.] was a species of blue beast, powerful and of great intelligence-a sacred animal like the dragons and serpents that certain religions adored, believing them to be the source of life." Raised in a proud Spanish family, Ulysses Ferragut is expected to follow in his father's footsteps by becoming a doctor. Enamored with tales of the Mediterranean as told by his seafaring uncle, nicknamed the Triton, Ulysses chooses to become a sailor instead. As a young man, he finds success as the captain and owner of the freighter Mare Nostrum, but obligations to his wife and son force him to abandon his dream. As the horrors of the First World War wreak havoc on Europe, the demand for shipping makes it impossible for Ulysses to resist a return to the sea. While in Italy, however, he finds more than he bargained for in the form of Freya Talberg, a beautiful Austrian who harbors a dangerous secret. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Vicente Blasco Ibanez's Mare Nostrum is a classic of Spanish literature reimagined for modern readers.

Vicente Blasco Ibanez (1867-1928) was a Spanish novelist, journalist, and political activist. Born in Valencia, he studied law at university, graduating in 1888. As a young man, he founded the newspaper El Pueblo and gained a reputation as a militant Republican. After a series of court cases over his controversial publication, he was arrested in 1896 and spent several months in prison. A staunch opponent of the Spanish monarchy, he worked as a proofreader for Filipino nationalist Jose Rizal's groundbreaking novel Noli Me Tangere (1887). Blasco Ibanez's first novel, The Black Spider (1892), was a pointed critique of the Jesuit order and its influence on Spanish life, but his first major work, Airs and Graces (1894), came two years later. For the next decade, his novels showed the influence of Emile Zola and other leading naturalist writers, whose attention to environment and social conditions produced work that explored the struggles of working-class individuals. His late career, characterized by romance and adventure, proved more successful by far. Blood and Sand (1908), The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1916), and Mare Nostrum (1918) were all adapted into successful feature length films by such directors as Fred Niblo and Rex Ingram.