Product Description
Mauprat (1837) is the romantic tale of a "wild" man civilized by the woman he loves. Deeply engaged with Rousseau's pedagogical treatise Emile, and with contemporary debate concerning inherited and acquired traits and tendencies, Mauprat is an expression of Sand's Utopian vision of a relationship governed by free choice and equality. Naomi Schor's introduction explores these and other aspects of the novel, while Sylvia Raphael's new translation does full justice to the powerfully descriptive qualities of one of George Sand's most exciting and absorbing novels. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

For many years, my favorite book
Now, as any deposed true queen would do, it lives happily in exile knowing thatit was pushed aside by such books as The Count of Montecristo,Don Quijote, On the Beach and so on, but, trust me, even thou in exile, this books lives in a palace, with all the servants and courtesans it deserves.

Bernard and Edmee - the cousins
This is the second Sand novel that I have read. Sadly it didn't measure up to the first, 'Indiana', for me. It is too long and the mannered society of the characters is too formal and stilted for me. And there is so much scene setting - it goes on and on and on. In fact I put the novel down for quite a while before I picked it up and read to the finish. And the ending does have more momentum than a lot that went before, but - perhaps a reflection of the time - I am perplexed at how an individual can be charged with murder when no-one has died and, indeed, even be sentenced to execution and, in the end, an execution does take place - still in the absence of a death.

But Bernard - brought up badly by the bad side of the family - is rescued and nurtured by the good side where he falls in love with his second cousin Edmee. And for seven years Edmee resists him - for two of those years he actually flees to America (and yes, I couldn't blame him). Of course, had he been raised in a supportive and caring environment perhaps he could have withstood Edmee's 'indifference' (initially she is betrothed to another, but she is released from that), but with the terrible upbringing he endured Bernard is torn apart by this apparent rejection in the heart of the part of the family that has adopted him.

So why does Edmee keep Bernard at arms length? It is not at all clear to me unless - as is indicated at times - she sees Bernard as mentally unstable (perhaps schizophrenic) and cannot take on the burden of caring for him, physically or in her heart. But she does not send him away either! There is one other possibility that Sand does not explore and that is that Edmee has an unseen physical disability that distracts and torments her in the face Bernard's love. But this is just making excuses for inexplicable behaviour.

Strangely for me, the sanest words in the novel come from the 'murderer' who comes upon Bernard and Edmee 'lost' in the woods. He says that the conversation he overheard nearly made him scream with laughter - Bernard with his childish pleas, Edmee with her haughty indifference. And that is exactly how I saw these two and in the end I really didn't need to spend as much time with them as George Sand has put me through.

It is an interesting novel but for me tedious in its extent and at times laboured in its prose. With unlikeable key characters, I find it hard to recommend. ... Read more

Product Description
"I was just going to do it, monsieur; but I saw a woman meet him. At that moment I said to myself: 'Perhaps it's monsieur and madame, who have taken a fancy to walk a bit before daybreak;' and I went back to bed. But this morning I heard Lelievre talking about a thief whose tracks he had seen in the park, and I said to myself: 'There's something under this." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Romance, Intrigue and A Happy Ending
This is the first I have novel I have read from Sand and I really liked it. Indiana is told from a narrator who we don't find out who it is until later on in the novel. Which makes for an interesting read because as the narrator tells the story and gets into the characters there is a distance and yet the character's give their thoughts too. It is unlike anything I have ever read.

Indiana will keep you guessing as it has lots of twist and turns in the novel and the ending will come as a complete surprise. It is pretty much a quick read and you will find yourself loving and hating all of the characters. Except Raymon he is just no good.

If you have never read Sand before this is a good book to start with seeing as it is the first novel she wrote on her own.

Not her best but still good
This is not my favorite of Sand's that I have read to date, I would suggest the Devil's Pool or the Black City first, they are both shorter and much stronger.Not to say this is a bad bit of writing.Considering this is her first solo publishing venture it is very impressive.She still shows flashes of great insight, there are wonderful very quotable lines throughout the work.There are some very stricking scenes, actually the last quarter of the book is pretty riveting.

Which is good because the rest of the book is alot ofvery careful build up and is sort of slow in places.The book is not filled with alot of dialogue, rather we have a third person omniscient narrator who lets us know what the main characters are thinking and feeling (even if they aren't quite sure of it themselves).

Indiana is a young bride to an old man who selfishlymarried her because he wanted someone to take care of him in his old age. She is wasting away from a lack of love, not that Delmare is any sort of ogre really, he seems to devolve slowly into a brute but one Sand never looses complete sympathy for.Sir Ralph is Indiana's cousin and protector, as he has nothing else in the world to live for.Noun is Indiana's Creole servant that essentially is like a sister to Indiana.

Noun though is sacraficed to passion as her lover moves onto another target, Indiana. Raymon has taken seducing women very seriously for his adult life, its essentially a game to him.He is very invested in the woman he loves while he loves her but he fully expects his love to end at some point.Which of course it does because he is a cad.

There are a few other characters but these are the core of the drama, it is a much smaller cast than in the other full length novel of Sand's that I have read "Horace".

I agree with one of the other reviewers that it is very interesting to see that the events of the book are indeed shaped by the events that are happening in France as well.It takes place when there is still a king in power, but the revolution is stirring very vigorously by the end of the novel and informs the actions of a few of the characters.

I'm not sure what I thought about the conclusion, it was a little odd as it is told by an unnamed first person character--seemed a little weird, almost as if Sand was trying to make her story have a sort of mythic or legendary tone to it.

A good read and not too hard to get into or to follow, possibly good for someone who likes Dickens or Eliot.

george sand's first novel
Written in the first part of the nineteenth century, this novel now looks rather quaint. Judged by today's standards of creating character, place, believable incident and action, it is clumsy. But, Sand was writing romance, which in her hands seems more like opera without the music. However, her focus of attention was not on the novel but on the crippling plight of women in French society. The most stirring moments in the book are when the central character, Indiana, writes a letter voicing her complaints about the injustices of marriage, etc. Sand, of course, was an unfettered letter-writer herself. It's no doubt true, though, that she reached more people by way of the novel than she would have by just writing passionate letters. It's just that we see where everything is going in this narrative long before it arrives. She told Flaubert once (in a letter) that she never rewrote. It shows. How else do you write 80 novels and die in your mid 70's? Nevertheless, she was a vital force in the world for raising consciousness of the oppressed condition of women.

One of the largely forgotten great novels
George Sand's Indiana dramatizes and explores a wide variety of concerns in the nineteenth century with a brilliance one rarely finds in a first novel: Arranged marriages, what it means to be a Creole, colonialism and plantation profiteering, slavery, the beginnings of the deterioration of Old Europe, and the rise of the businessman.In terms of narrative style, this may be one of the most unique novels I have read.The use of narrator to facilitate multiple endings is ingenious as well as baffling.Once you get to the end and discover who the narrator is or could be, you will likely want to re-read the novel, and voila!It's like experiencing the novel for the first time.It is a very rare talent indeed to create one novel for a first reading and a second novel for a second reading.It's a mystery to me how Sand has lost much of her notoriety.This novel is far superior than most you will find anywhere and in any language.

maybe 3.5 stars
My first experience with Gerge Sand was her Fadette in Japanese translation.The translation was poor, but the story was quite interesting and what she was trying to get at was very fresh and different.I enjoyed it very much.
This one, Indiana, however, was a real sentimental melodrama.Or, perhaps Danielle Steele 19th century edition.The hero and the heroine are bathed in ill-fortunes from their births, pounded by miseries and heartbreaks, starving for love, but exhibit great courage and virtue under the grip of uncontrollable fate.In the end, the heaven will smile at them.
The characters are rather flat, very predictable and uninteresting.I had a very difficult time sympathizing any of the characters.The narrator pities them too much and doesn't give you room to sympathyze them.
Speaking of the narrator, I thought for sure it was a woman, because of the way Indiana's sufferings were narrated, but in the end I found out that it was a young man!Perhaps young men back in those days were as melodramatic and emotional as this narrator.I don't know.

Yet, there was something to this story.Sand seemed to have a lot to tell, she had a point of views, some messages to tell.And there was enough depths and intellect to what she was trying to deliver.And that's what kept me going, and that's what kept this story from falling vulgar and becoming Harlequinn romance.

I contemplated on selling this book after reading it, but I'm having a second thought.Maybe I'll keep it after all.
... Read more

Product Description
This book is more than the autobiography of an extraordinary woman. It is also the story of a century of French history as lived through the experiences and fates of three generations, the tumultuous history of the birth of modern France and the transformation of a society. " ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

"Perhaps a bit too much information..."
... as well as not enough. When I told a friend that I had read George Sand's 1100 page autobiography, he replied with the subject quote.And I would certainly agree. How many other autobiographies are this long?And stop in mid-life?There is a "Doppler shift" to her story, consider that the first 375 pages cover her ancestors before she is born in 1804, and the story ends around 1840, with another 36 years of her life uncovered. The first part of the book is far too many letters, printed in their entirety, of her ancestors.

Her father was of "noble" birth, had been with Napoleon at Marengo, and tragically died in a horse riding accident in 1808. She had an unhappy relationship with her mother, of more common birth, and was eventually placed in a convent, whose time she remembers fondly. She married - a conventional "escape", but a loveless choice - in 1822, and had two children, Maurice and Solange.

She was one of the true "giants" of the 19th Century, a woman who was famous for defying (some) social conventions, notoriously dressing as a man for the freedom. She was a prolific writer, with numerous novels and plays to her credit. She loved her "home country" of Nohant, in the Berry. And she dazzled, perhaps not so much by her physical beauty, which has been questioned, but by her intellect. She was lovers with at least Alfred de Musset and Chopin, and for the later she wrote a novel about her winter in Majorca with him. She also developed at least friendships with Franz Listz, Eugene Delacroix, Ivan Turgenev, Balzac, Flaubert, and Stendhal. She also had here detractors, a contemporary, Charles Baudiere, and much later, Simone de Beauvoir was quite critical. Her novel "Francois Le Champi" was placed in Proust's "Swan's Way."

It is indeed a very long slog to reach the end, but there are nuggets of insight along the way. For example, on page 794 she comments on the prohibitions against suicide but reflects on the actions of "martyrs" who essential hasten their own death. On 1010, there is: "But it is also true that the wish--nay, divine law--of Providence is transgressed every time a man and woman join their lips without uniting their hearts and minds."Despite these, my central criticism is that her story lacked introspection - what were her true feelings, particularly concerning the galaxy of "stars" that she knew? No doubt she was conforming with some of the conventions of her age by being reticent in expressing them, but we are all the poorer for it. Her "style" approaches far too many Christmas letters I receive: we went there, did that, but no personal thoughts or transformations.

I've been fortunate to visit her home in Nohant on a couple occasions. In the very heart of France, in her modest chateau, it is possible to imagine her life there in the 19th Century. The pine trees, one for each child, which she planted upon their birth, still grow in the garden. They have the table set for dinner, with name tags for the famous visitors. And there is the small theater within the house for performances. And her grave is nearby. Overall, reading "Indiana," and visiting her home might give you a better feel for her life than these 1100 pages.

not a masterpiece
Ever since having watched Impromptu with Hugh Grant, I have wanted to read this book. I read Indiana, which I didn't like a lot, but Sand's autobiography is a great story that one enjoys reading. Swings of her mood,her independence, her love for men. It's great, although it's not amasterpiece of literature. But maybe it's better in French. If you want toknow about her life, read the book, but don't expect Hugh Grant in there.As far as I've read, the movie is much more interesting. ... Read more

Product Description

Regarded as one of Sand's best novels, Lélia is an important document in the evolution of women's consciousness. Published in 1833, when Sand was 29, it stunned Victorians by advocating the same standard of morality for men and women and by suggesting that both the prostitute and the married woman were slaves to male desire. Sand also questioned monogamy, fidelity, and monastic celibacy. She later made an unsuccessful attempt to revise the book and to expunge its despair and skepticism.

Although Sand wrote copiously, until recently only a handful of her books were available in English. This first English translation of Lélia is an excellent rendering, capturing the raptures, the mysticism, and the nineteenth-century flavor ot its eternally fascinating subject.

Customer Reviews (1)

Poetic, magnificent, inspiring, dismal, different.
This novel although certainly different nevertheless it is exciting in its own peculiar way, very dramatic, intensely poetic, soft, charming and inviting; and yet by all means the heroine is despairing, terribly gloomysort of character, suicidal and dark, but mostly she is out of this world,alike a visionary. The book is gentle, romantic in tragic sense of theword, Leilia is kind-hearted and yet doomed, reader grasps by own choicecertainly. It is a finely written book, belonging perfectly to its Romantic19th century era. It is dark, tragic, sentimental. But simplybreath-taking. Can't be put down easily. Quite haunting. ... Read more

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The Devil's Pool. please visit www.valdebooks.com for a full list of titles ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Letters, French; Biography ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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George Sand recounts the story of her 1838 winter in Majorca, a winter she passed in the company of Frederick Chopin. She describes the natural beauties of Majorca as well as the rumblings of approaching war.

Customer Reviews (2)

A Classic of Its Kind:A Season in Hell
Sand's chronicle of a wretched season spent on the Balearic island of Mallorca is the archetype for the "bad-trip" school of travel writing.Caustic, spiteful and utterly devoid of sentimentality or remorse, Sand (who was visiting with her beastly young daughter, Solange, and an ailing Frederic Chopin) trashes everything Mallorcan, from the olive oil, to the weather, to the landscape, to the moral character of the islanders.(If only the British and German package tourists who have colonized and defaced Mallorca in the 20th century had read Sand beforehand!)

An added pleasure in this edition is the sniping and meticulous footnoting by Mallorcan expat Robert Graves.He gainsays and qualifies nearly every contentious little gripe of Sand's, providing the reader with an interesting cross-generational literary (and personal) cat/dog-fight.

My guess is, if you enjoy the withering observations of Paul Theroux and his disciples, you will enjoy Sand's nasty little book.If, however, you like your travel books in soft-focus and heavy on the ambience and schmaltz, look elsewhere.

Disappointing
I found this book disappointing, because I expected it to be about the relationship between George Sand and Frederic Chopin while in Majorca.However, this book has absolutely nothing to do with either Sand or Chopin. This book is entirely made up of George Sand describing the scenery,people, and foods of Majorca, and just complaining about how she hated itthere.And to make it worse, there are footnotes on every page saying thatSand was totally wrong about everything she was saying.I would notrecommend this book to anyone, unless they wanted to read up on whatMajorca was like during the 1800's. ... Read more

Product Description

While working in a small geological museum, Alexis Hartz meets his cousin Laura, who has discovered a way to enter a geode. Travelling through a vast and glittering landscape of brilliant crystals, Alexis falls passionately in love with Laura but, when they return to the ordinary world, only friendship remains. He yearns for the perfect world of the crystals, and returning to it becomes a perilous obsession. But is the crystal world as real as it seems, or is his mind playing tricks on him?

Written in 1864, this little-known work by George Sand is a fantastical novel in the truest sense of the word; a strange tale with echoes of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Conan Doyle's Lost World and even Candide and Frankenstein.

Customer Reviews (1)

Biography of a Pioneering Feminist
I first became aware of this remarkable woman 60 years ago upon seeing the 1945 technicolor film "A Song To Remember", about the Polish pianist Frederic Chopin and his infamous mistress who wrote under the pen name of George Sand.Dozens of biographies have been written about her (many sensationalized) but my favorite for both style and substance has been than of Andei Maurois titled "Lelia:The Life of George Sand". This is the true story of a royal bastard who became a celebrated novelist and early feminist, winning the right of women to inherit property and helping promote the concept of "Women's Suffrage" in England and the U.S.I've owned an original hardcover edition for years and marvel at your ability to own your own copy at such a bargain price. Go for it!

... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

don't be fooled....
This is a novella not a novel. Don't be fooled by the page length. More than half of the book is given over to ancillary material. Sand's story runs only about 80 pages. Still, it's worth buying and reading. The story is rather slight. It's a romance that unfolds over the course of only a couple of days. But Sand sketches her characters memorably and creates genuine suspense over the outcome of the heroine's choice. Not a masterpiece, but a great way to introduce yourself to one of the world's great writers.

Marianne as a liberated Cinderella
Marianne is a heroine that is not beloved for her typical beauty, and is not a slave to the expected behavior of young wealthy women.This is somewhat of a faery tale romance, without seeming unreal or contrived. Sand presents the two main characters as real, intellegent, and passionateabout nature. It is nice to read a book about a strong woman without theauthor feeling she needed to sway to much in the women's lib direction. George Sand's life is an inspiration, as is this romance where two kindredsouls overcome the standard ideas of age, meekness, and the expectedbehavior of the classes.I read this at the same time as Dumas' Camille,and in only two days. I couldn't wait to see what happened to thecharacters in these books. ... Read more

Product Description
Set against the backdrop of France's industrial revolution, this 1859 novel by the controversial, passionately socialist George Sand follows the fortunes of the dynamic, young metal smith Etienne Lavoute, known as Sept-Epees (or Seven Blades), as he strives to free himself not from the working class but from the woes imposed upon it by grasping mill owners. While ambition is the spur that prompts Sept-Epees to purchase a ramshackle factory he is ill equipped to run, love is the secret cause. For Sept-Epees, however misguidedly, would make himself worthy of the orphaned (like him), wise, pretty, and capable Tonine Gaucher. As eloquent in its exposure of the social ills that afflicted French workers at the onset of the industrial revolution as it is poignant in its exploration of love's turbulent course for the prideful Sept-Epees and the proud Tonine, The Black City reflects George Sand's enduring admiration for the struggles and triumphs of the working class as well as her genius in the characterization of strong, clear-eyed, independent women. If in Sept-Epees she embodies the estimable worker who can make of his craft an art, in Tonine she epitomizes the woman whose successes stunningly defy the conventions of the age. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Brisk story - maybe a little too brisk
What's your image of a nineteenth century novel? Paragraphs and paragraphs of description? Dozens of characters? Hundreds and hundreds of pages? In short, Dickens? The Black City is a very different kind of story.

The Black City is a hive of hardworking, proud artisans...not rich, but not degradingly poor either. We are given just enough description for a general idea of the town - it seems to be built in a canyon next to a waterfall that powers some of the local industries. We meet about half a dozen residents, focusing mainly on Sept-Epees and Tonine, a young man and woman who are in love...or are they? They aren't sure themselves. If you're used to nineteenth century English novels, you may be surprised that Tonine really is not at all sure that marriage is a good idea for her - she likes her independence.

The plot hurtles along (the book is less than 190 pages) from one unexpected crisis to another - Sept-Epees has a chance to propose to Tonine, but they fumble it between them! Sept-Epees saves Audebert from suicide! Sept-Epees buys a bankrupt factory! Sept-Epees realizes he knows less about management than he thought! (Okay, it's largely the story of Sept-Epees, but we do see what Tonine is doing and thinking at crucial moments.) And on we go - hold on tight, or you'll fall off this speeding train.

Really, I enjoyed The Black City a lot, up to the last couple of chapters. The ending managed to feel both satisfying and rushed - it would be a better story if it was fifty or a hundred pages longer. We needed to see and hear details about the transforming experiences that both Tonine and Sept-Epees went through in the last year or so of the time covered...if only Sand had put the effort into telling us how those events happened, instead of just announcing that they had happened, this would be a six-star book.

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I wanted to know how Tonine coped with inheriting Molino's wealth and putting it to good use. Given human nature as Sand shows it and as we see it ourselves, you could expect that Tonine would make some mistakes and have to learn from them and that some people would resent and distrust her. What mistakes did she make? Who helped her, and who was hostile? How did she recover from early goofs to set up a thriving model factory and win the respect of the entire Black City? Now, that would be a GREAT story. And I didn't get to read it, because Sand never wrote it.)

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Good for the Sand collection
As usual Sand creates a short story mixing her interest on working class and equity values. Inside the romantic time when she wrote it, concludes that you don't need to be rich to achieve happiness. I enjoy the way she remarks several human values like kindness, generosity and detachment of things. The book came new (despite it said "used") and in short time.

Really good.
It took me a few chapters to get into this book (possibly because I was reading it as I was falling asleep) However, once I was in the midst of it, I just sat down and finished it off.The characters are really appealing and interesting, and also very human.With a very few descriptive words I know these people that Sand has created, I can see them very clearly and imagine every detail that she doesn't give us.
It isn't a very long story, though it takes place over a couple of years, and the cast of characters is very small.Sept-Epees is our hero and Tonine the heroine, they are a very interesting and powerfully drawn pair.Sept-Epees at first has a burning ambition to prove there are better things in life for him and invests all of his time and money in a money-pit of a factory (What it produces we never find out,but it is ultimately not importatnt)This ambition drives him further and further away from what everyone else (including the reader) know as his real happiness, Tonine.

The complexity of the plot that Sand manages to created with relatively few characters or incidences is amazing and very tantalizing.I would reccomend this book to anyone who was looking for something along the lines of Dickens but with a little more sunshine.

French literature at its best
If you like Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, or Gustave Flaubert, you will love George Sand.Many people have heard her name but much of her work has never been translated into English, so she is largely unread in the United States.Do yourself a favor and buy this book.The story seems fairly simple on the surface, but it has layers of meaning and truth that will strike you.The love story is very real and beautifully crafted, and the book's hero and heroine would not be out of place in the twenty-first century.I enjoyed every page of this book.You will, too!It's a must-own!

On love, life, business, and the Industrial Revolution
This short, fast paced novel, artfully translated by Kover, is as much a social commentary on life during the Industrial Revolution as it is a story of true love. The plot is engaging, the characters are convincing, and the story culminates in an inspiring twist. A pleasure to read, The Black City will surely strike a familiar chord with every entrepreneur, aspiring business owner, or anyone who has ever yearned for something more in life. I highly recommend reading it! ... Read more

Product Description
An engrossing biography that unravels the mystery of nineteenth-century France’s most prominent woman

George Sand was the most famous—and most scandalous—woman in nineteenth-century France. As a writer, she was enormously prolific—she wrote more than ninety novels, thirty-five plays, and thousands of pages of autobiography. She inspired writers as diverse as Flaubert and Proust but is often remembered for her love affairs with such figures as Musset and Chopin. Her affair with Chopin is the most notorious: their nine-year relationship ended in 1847 when Sand began to suspect that the composer had fallen in love with her daughter, Solange.

Drawing on archival sources—much of it neglected by Sand’s previous biographers—Elizabeth Harlan examines the intertwined issues of maternity and identity that haunt Sand’s writing and defined her life. Why was Sand’s relationship with her daughter so fraught? Why was a woman so famous for her personal and literary audacity ultimately so conflicted about women’s liberation? In an effort to solve the riddle of Sand’s identity, Harlan examines a latticework of lives that include Solange, Sand’s mother and grandmother, and Sand’s own protagonists, whose stories amplify her own.



Elizabeth Harlan is the author of two novels, Footfalls and Watershed. She lives in Paris.
... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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George Sand did not have to wait long for success. She won fame with her first book. With her second one she became rich, or what she considered rich. She tells us that she sold it for a hundred and sixty pounds! That seemed to her the wealth of the world, and she did not hesitate to leave her attic on the Quay St. Michel for a more comfortable flat on Quay Malaquais, which de Latouche gave up to her. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

george sand some aspects of her life
doumic chose to treat this as an analytic journal that drones on with pompous adjectives and opinions. ... Read more

Product Description
CONSUELO: A Romance of Venice (1842-1843) by George Sand is a glorious story of true love, a paean to music and the creative power of art, and a personal crossroads of choices.

Consuelo, a plain young woman with a divine operatic voice and a heart of sterling integrity, rises from her lowly zingarella (gypsy) beginnings to become a prima donna in Venice and in several courts of Europe, bewitching all with her uncompromising artistic excellence and her profound interpretation of music. At the same time romantic choices are laid before her in the shape of a beautiful but frivolous comrade of childhood, a loyal friend and fellow adventurer, a mysterious holy madman who may also be a saint and her one true love, and finally, a king.

And yet, every artist must choose the nature of their personal fulfillment, and Consuelo's life path appears to be ever-dissonant with ecstasy and sorrow, duty and joie de vivre, love and sacrifice. What will the pure-hearted zingarella choose?

Great historical composers and other personages make delightful and surprising appearances all throughout this emotionally intense and exalted novel, often verging on the realm of the supernatural, and considered by many to be George Sand's masterpiece. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A copyediting disaster - do not buy this edition!
Another reviewer had noted this, but unfortunately I did not read the reviews since I knew I wanted the book. However, I wanted to repeat that reviewer's warning. DO NOT BUY THIS EDITION. It has typographical/grammatical errors on every page and makes the book, in my opinion, unreadable. Like the other reviewer, I will NEVER purchase another book from Norilana books.

major typo alert!
Donot buy this book! Unless you don't mind your reading experience being totally ruined by typos. This WOULD be a great novel, if not for the fact every page (I mean it!) has at least one major gaffe on it, some of them revealing that English was not the proofreader's original language. I will never purchase a book from this publisher as I do not want to invest in behavior of this kind.

Magickal
This book was the guiding compass in my teenage years - art, music,coming of age, love, honor, mystery.It is truly remarkable, gripping, mystical, deep, full of underlying human mythology. I think it will hold its grip on anyone regardless of age, however! Man or woman, child or older being.Enjoy, especially those who will travel its path for the first time!I am surprised there is no film based on this book yet - the characters are delicious, Caliostro alone (in a sequel, Countess of Rudolstadt). Probably just a matter of time - no film can do it justice though, but our imaginations can!

Very Gripping Love Novel!!
I read the novel in Russian. Never read in English, but looking forward to it. I think it is one of the best George Sand's novels. It is full of mysterious and exciting moments. I hope the book in English is as fabulous as in Russian. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

In the heart of the Berry...
George Sand, one of the great literary talents of 19th Century France, and a woman who managed to attract much of the artistic talent of the era, from Chopin to Turgenev, and Flaubert, wrote an 1100 page autobiography, (Story of My Life George Sand). For those searching for a true feel for her time and place, I wouldn't recommend it; rather, I consider reading a couple of her novels, and visiting her home in the heart of the Berry region of France, near Nohant.

Her grave is there, as well as the two towering cypress trees, planted when each of her two children, Solange and Maurice were born. Before you go, I'd highly recommend this compact (60 pages or so) excellent guide, complete with numerous quality photographs, and numerous graphics that illustrate what will be seen. For example, on the inside cover, there is an indexed graphic identifying all the buildings on the estate, as well as one labeling all the rooms of the main house. On the back inside cover there are five different timelines, dealing with the political life of France during her life, her books, the estate itself, her own family, and, of course, her famous friends.

Each of the interior rooms is photographed, and is accompanied by an index identifying its place in the overall house. As George Sand said about the period, 1852 to her death in 1876, it proved to be a refuge in her old age. There is a portion which covers the decline of the estate after her death, as the heirs simply did not have the passion or dedication to maintain its spirit. Eventually in the 20th century it was acquired in order to preserve the cultural patrimony of France. Ah, to have the same strong ethic in America. Anyhow, an essential guidebook for your visit, the price at Amazon through the secondary sellers is a bit steep. If you wait and buy it "at the door," it is 6 euros. A 5-star guidebook.
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