![]() ![]() Each is constrained by his or her social status in this story of money, love, and class at the end of the age of duels and the beginning of the age of electricity. The rich cast includes the old clerk Rzecki, nostalgic for the revolutions of 1848 the young scientist Ochocki, dreaming of flying machines the deranged and manipulative Baroness Krzeszowska the angelic widow Stawska the wise dowager duchess and many more. As the novel opens in Warsaw in 1878, our hero, Wokulski, having risen from rags to riches now seeks the respect of the aristocracy and, in particular, the love of the cold and scheming Izabela Lecka. Yet it is less a novel of ideas than a novel of people who have ideas, characters as vivid and memorable as any in Dickens. The Doll is a classic of Polish literature, a novel that takes in the whole nineteenth century and looks ahead to modern questions of empire, revolution, anti-Semitism, and socialism. ![]()
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