With Fire and Sword

I feel like with this novel, I finally found the book I was searching for with this project, which is to say a book that I never would have thought to read had it not won a Nobel prize but which ended up being really, really good.

Name: Henryk Sienkiewicz

Year Won: 1905

Read: "With Fire and Sword"

Original Language: Polish

Reason: "because of his outstanding merits as an epic writer"

About: "With Fire and Sword" is (an approximately 1200 page) the first of three books that form a trilogy set in the Khmelnytsky Uprising. It follows a number of characters, notably Pan Yan (a great hero who ends up married to a beautiful princess who seems to be kidnapped a lot by nefarious characters) through wars, heroics, and adventures. There's adventure. There are heroics. There are dark, miserable scenes (such as the one in which peasants are freed, but refuse to flee, instead kneeling while waiting for the executioner's blow). There's humor (especially from the giant who wishes to behead three men in a blow, but can only get two at a time as they won't line up right). There's romance. There's politics. This epic has it all.

What I Liked: The ability of Sienkiewicz to create a scene is unparalleled. The opening list a number of omens that make the spine tingle. Some of the war scenes make me feel like I was right there. The humor makes me smile. There's so much in this novel that's vivid, brilliant, and creative that I can't recount it all. I'm writing this as I finish the first book, but could easily see reading more. This is the work of a master author.

What I Disliked: There's not much of a plot, per se, at least a plot that goes from point A to B to C. This makes it sometimes a bit hard to follow and to feel more like reading a number of brilliant interrelated scenes than following a story that makes me eager to read onto the next page.

Should it have won a Nobel: Yes. Many times yes. This deserves to be in the epic cannon along with "War and Peace". It's a really, really good book. In many ways, I liked this better than "War and Peace" (as it's funnier and has more light hearted moments - as well as Sienkiewicz does a better job describing things than Tolstoy does). The only way I can fault it is that there isn't a hugely coherent through plot the way there is in the best of novels.

Next up: Rudyard Kipling (as before, Giosuè Carducci isn't in my local library)