A Case of Curiosities: A Novel

Synopsis

This tale of an ambitious inventor in France as the Revolution looms is &“brilliantly playful . . . full of lore and lewdness&” (Chicago Tribune). &“A portrait of a young mechanical genius in 18th-century France, delivered along with a gallimaufry of odd and intriguing facts and a rich, lusty picture of society in that time and place.&” —Publishers Weekly In France, on the eve of the Revolution, a young man named Claude Page sets out to become the most ingenious and daring inventor of his time. Over the course of a career filled with violence and passion, Claude learns the arts of enameling and watchmaking from an irascible, defrocked abbé, then apprentices himself to a pornographic bookseller and applies his erotic erudition to the seduction of the wife of an impotent wigmaker. But it is Claude&’s greatest device—a talking mechanical head—that both crowns his career and leads to an execution as tragic as that of Marie Antoinette, and far more bizarre. &“Like a joint effort by Henry Fielding and John Barth&” (Chicago Tribune), this &“captivating novel&” (San Francisco Chronicle) marked the debut of one of the finest literary artists of our time. &“A Case of Curiosities . . . really is brilliant. Also witty, learned, ingenious, sly, and bawdy.&” —Entertainment Weekly &“What John Fowles did for the 19th century with The French Lieutenant&’s Woman and Umberto Eco did for the 14th with The Name of the Rose . . . Kurzweil now does for the late 18th century.&” —San Francisco Chronicle

Copyright:

1992

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

384 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780547350868

Related ISBNs:

9780156012898

Publisher:

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Date of Addition:

12/16/24

Copyrighted By:

status in your country.

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Literature and Fiction, Humor

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.