The Manuscript Found in Saragossa

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 is discovered some forty years later in a sealed casket from which tales of characters transformed through disguise magic and illusion of honour and cowardice of hauntings and seductions leap forth to create a vibrant polyphony of human voices. Jan Potocki (1761-1812) used a range of literary styles - gothic picaresque adventure pastoral erotica - in his novel of stories-within-stories which like the Decameron and Tales from the Thousand and One Nights provides entertainment on an epic scale.