In August 1785, Paris buzzed with a scandal that had everything--an eminent churchman, a female fraudster, a part-time prostitute and the hated Queen herself. Its centrepiece was the most expensive diamond necklace ever assembled, and the tangle of fraud, folly, blindness and self-delusion it provoked. The humiliation the affair brought on the royal family contributed to their appalling deaths in the Revolution just four years later. In this unusual, witty and often surprising version of the story, the great Hungarian ...
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In August 1785, Paris buzzed with a scandal that had everything--an eminent churchman, a female fraudster, a part-time prostitute and the hated Queen herself. Its centrepiece was the most expensive diamond necklace ever assembled, and the tangle of fraud, folly, blindness and self-delusion it provoked. The humiliation the affair brought on the royal family contributed to their appalling deaths in the Revolution just four years later. In this unusual, witty and often surprising version of the story, the great Hungarian novelist Antal Szerb takes the narrative as a standpoint from which to survey the entire age--including aspects of it seldom considered by more orthodox historians. The author's vast knowledge is worn very lightly and the book teems with amusing anecdotes, but it is, at heart, a deeply personal work, a remarkable gesture of defiance against the brutal world in which it was written.
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Add this copy of The Queen's Necklace to cart. $13.09, very good condition, Sold by Goldstone Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Ammanford, CARMS, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2011 by Pushkin Press.
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Add this copy of The Queen's Necklace to cart. $42.74, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2009 by Pushkin Press.
