A Case of Curiosities

Availability:
Ebook in EPUB format. Available for immediate download after we receive your order

DRM:
Watermark

Publication Year:
2001

ISBN-13: 9780547350868

<DIV><B>This tale of an ambitious inventor in France as the Revolution looms is &ldquo;brilliantly playful&#160;.&#160;.&#160;.&#160;full of lore and lewdness&rdquo; (<I>Chicago Tribune</I>).</B><BR /><BR /> &ldquo;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.&rdquo; &mdash;<I>Publishers Weekly</I><BR /> &#160;<BR /> 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 abb&eacute;, then apprentices himself to a pornographic bookseller and applies his erotic erudition to the seduction of the wife of an impotent wigmaker.<BR /> &#160;<BR /> But it is Claude&rsquo;s greatest device&mdash;a talking mechanical head&mdash;that both crowns his career and leads to an execution as tragic as that of Marie Antoinette, and far more bizarre.<BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;Like a joint effort by Henry Fielding and John Barth&rdquo; (<I>Chicago Tribune</I>), this &ldquo;captivating novel&rdquo; (<I>San Francisco Chronicle</I>) marked the debut of one of the finest literary artists of our time.<BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;<I>A Case of Curiosities</I>&#160;.&#160;.&#160;. really is brilliant. Also witty, learned, ingenious, sly, and bawdy.&rdquo; &mdash;<I>Entertainment Weekly</I><BR /> &#160;<BR /> &ldquo;What John Fowles did for the 19th century with <I>The French Lieutenant&rsquo;s Woman</I> and Umberto Eco did for the 14th with <I>The Name of the Rose</I>&#160;.&#160;.&#160;. Kurzweil now does for the late 18th century.&rdquo; &mdash;<I>San Francisco Chronicle</I></DIV>