The Manuscript Found in Saragossa

by Jan Potocki

Book Overview

A literary masterpiece by a Polish traveller, aristocratic adventurer, political activist, ethnographer and publisher

Alphonse, a young Walloon officer, is travelling to join his regiment in Madrid in 1739. But he soon finds himself mysteriously detained at a highway inn in the strange and varied company of thieves, brigands, cabbalists, noblemen, coquettes and gypsies, whose stories he records over sixty-six days. The resulting manuscript...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140445803
• ISBN13: 9780140445800
• Release Date: September 1996
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 656 Pages
• Weight: 0.93 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.9" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

This is an Amazing Book

If you don't mind having your brains twisted by stories-within-stories-within-stories, your brain will change from being a 98lbs weakling to a taller, stronger brain. I found this book at my local chain bookstore, where it literally fell into my hands (it fell off of a shelf). I count myself lucky. It is a wonderful read - the translator did a great job- full of murder, mystery, sex, and darn near everything else. But, beware of the sisters and don't read before you go to bed. You may wake up with a couple of, shall we say, companions, who won't have a lot to say? Buy this book. You won't regret it.

A Classic that deserves more attention. Plus its funny!

The book is a collection of intertwining, often hilarious, stories of various natures, styles, and character: gothic, romance, a singular mathmatician, erotica, chivalry, adventure, greed, religion from many perspectives. It seems that this novel deserves to be more popular, it fits the modern attention span with its substratum of vignettes, and the larger grand story that encompasses them, a timeless tale. The book is funny and the message profound, but of the bewildering conundrum sort that some great poems often leave one with, as the story intertwines the symbols of various lives into something that was mature and introspective but uplifting and cathartic -- it doesn't rely on words but on situations to do this; so probably losses little in translation as many poems do. If anything it leaves one with stronger sense of brotherhood and love for one's neighbor. Definitely fits with modern multiculturalism, or what it should be anyway, and I guess the author was also a Freemason; a strange bag of humanism. I will never forget some of the images, Potocki had quite an imagination. There are also a lot of parallels with Parzival (the Grail Story) of the farcical sort. The man who can neither stand, nor sit, nor lie (A symbolic castrated Christian in the Grail); the apostasy of one's religion for the sake of a beautiful girl(s) (in Parzival the Muslim gives up his religion without a second thought); mindful, mocking anchorites (in the Grail he scolds Parzival for blowing his chance); the lone search verse the social search. How does one end a book like this? I think the question is was it really meant to end?

A Very Palpable Hit

Imagine a book written by Edgar Allen Poe, translated by Edward Fitzgerald, filtered through the consciousness of Jorge Luis Borges, and you would have some inkling of what makes this extraordinary book so special. It is to literature what surrealism is to painting. Potocki, who on the strength of this book alone qualifies as Poland's greatest literary figure, prefigures the postmodern movement with his sleight-of-hand and multi-multi-layered text. A Freudian could spend years investigating the recesses and depths of Potocki's subconscious. The framing device is a young nobleman's romantic wanderings through a section of Spain that could exist only in the mind of someone who was none too selective about his/her diet, or the kind of herbs they decided to ingest. A grotesque and lurid air suffuses this imaginative tale. The plot, if it could be called such a thing, unfolds like a chinese puzzle, one unreliable narrative nested within another. ...It wends its way into your thoughts like an ear-boring worm. It is the sort of work that Danielewski attempted, rather feebly by comparison, in his novel, House of Leaves. Potocki combines the supernatural with the erotic in a way that is unique in literature. Open the pages of this book and prepare to be disturbed and unsettled at times, but be prepared also to engage in a long, strange, diverting trip. By the way there is a CD of a movie version of Manuscript which was made in Europe in the 60s. Apparently it has been shown periodically in San Francisco art houses, and was appreciated by Jerry Garcia, among others. If the movie even approximates the book, I could understand why.

One of the Greatest Books Ever...

This is one of the greatest works of literature ever. Its author, Jan Potocki, was obvioiusly a scholar of the highest magnitude, as is seen through his detailed and honest treatment of many subjects ranging from cabbalism to ancient history to the customs of hundreds of European communities. The tales center loosely around a period of about two months during which Alphonse van Worden, a captain in the Walloon Guard, crosses the Sierra Morena on his way to Madrid. Along the way, he meets many colorful characters who share their stories, and these stories weave together and branch out into substories with such intricacy that the reader is astounded by the author's cleverness. I would recommend this to anyone who likes to be sucked into a book and not return until it's finished.

Old-Fashioned in the best sense. Highly recommended.

One of my favorite books ever. To describe 'The Manuscript Found at Saragossa' as a novel does not begin to describe the complexity, the richness and the humanity this book contains.Among a host of themes explored in the volume, it can be read as a meditation on the enlightenment, an introduction to Jewish mysticism or a primer on Euclidean geometry. The incredible ease with which tales are told from shifting points of view and alternating narrators. The time frame moves seamlessly from past to present, occasionally causing confusion but rewarding the patient reader. Complicated but well worth the effort. In an age of increasingly personal, neurotic narratives this book reminds one of the importance of the book of ideas.