The Fencing Master ISBN: 9780547539461 Platform/Publisher: Ebook Central / Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade & Reference Publishers Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Limited; Download: 7 Days at a Time Subjects: Literature;
Spain's bestselling novelist follows three polished and erudite thrillers (The Flanders Panel; The Club Dumas; The Seville Communion) with a fourth that combines the classic art of fencing, 19th-century Spanish monarchical politics and the eternal lure of the femme fatale. Don Jaime Astarloa, aging and solitary, is Madrid's greatest fencing master, eking out a threadbare living in this age of the pistol by teaching the sons of the nobility. In the hot summer of 1868, while rumors abound in Madrid of possible insurrection and the forced abdication of Queen Isabelle II, Don Jaime is visited by a beautiful young woman calling herself Adela de Otero, who offers him double his usual fee to teach her a secret, famously difficult sword thrust. At first Don Jaime refuses to consider a woman as a student; but with her intricate knowledge of fencing and the mysterious, tiny scar at the corner of her mouth, Adela wins him over and proves to be an expert fencer, gifted, disciplined and determined. Soon she is winning Don Jaime's heart as well. Thus is set into motion a complex succession of plots and counterplots analogous to the thrust and parry of a fencing match. Prez-Reverte is a master of lushly atmospheric suspense, and his prose is as spellbinding in the fencing gallery as it is in the arcane realm of honor and loyalty that shapes Don Jaime's world. The mysteries unravel to the final pages, as Don Jaime pursues his lifelong dream of discovering "the unstoppable thrust," not in politics, contemplation of his art or even romance, but on the floor of battle. 100,000 first printing; $100,000 ad/promo; author tour. (June) FYI: The Ninth Gate, the film of Prez-Reverte's The Club Dumas, directed by Roman Polanski and starring Johnny Depp, will open in April. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Novelist and former journalist Arturo Pérez-Reverte Gutiérrez was born in Cartagena, Spain on November 25, 1951. He started his journalistic career writing for the Spanish newspaper Pueblo and later for Television Espanola - the Spanish state owned television, in the role of war correspondant. He worked as a war correspondent from 1973 to1994 before becoming a full-time writer. His first novel, El húsar, which was set in the Napoleonic Wars, was published in 1986, and he is well-known internationally for his popular Captain Alatriste fiction series, which takes place in 17th-century Europe. Pérez-Reverte has been elected to the Spanish Royal Academy.
