Friday 28 December 2012

Alessandro Manzoni: "The Betrothed"

I am nearing the end of reading, in translation, Alessandro Manzoni's great novel, The Betrothed ("I Promessi Sposi").  
It has something for every reader:  a sweet love story, and a rattling adventure, wrapped around a long and harrowing historical account of the Great Plague of Milan which ravaged northern Italy (and many other parts of Europe) during the Thirty Years' War.  There are dreadful scenes of suffering, and of wickedness;  and scenes in which God's power and love shine through it all.

It has been hard going at times, but I now have that feeling one has at the end of certain books, that I have been enriched by the experience. 

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