Goldsworthy captures the human perspective of life in the cold war superbly and sympathetically. But when she falls in love with an English poet and flees from behind the iron curtain to Britain, she discovers that she has exchanged her gilded cage for a life of terminal incompatibility. Its protagonist, Milena, is one of the fortunate beneficiaries of Soviet largesse in the 80s and observes the privations that others endure with suitable detachment. Vesna Goldsworthy’s excellent new novel is a comedy of manners that is nevertheless fraught with tension. Shawcross’s fascinating debut is keenly attuned to the ironies and tragedies that Maximilian faced in his ill-fated task. Unfortunately, the titular ruler, “the hapless Habsburg archduke” Maximilian I, proved singularly ill-equipped for the task, preferring poetry and drama to the gritty business of imperialism. He would invade Mexico by proxy, install a puppet emperor on the throne and thereby expand France’s dominion. In the 1860s, the French emperor Napoleon III came up with a ploy that, as the historian Edward Shawcross suggests, “was outrageous even by the standards of European imperialism”.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |