SUNDAY EXPRESS BOOK OF THE YEAR

 

“Mantel's writing is so exact and brilliant that, in itself, it seems an act of survival, even redemption.”—Joan Acocella, The New Yorker

 

Capturing the violence, tragedy, history, and drama of the French Revolution, this novel focuses on the families and loves of three men who led the Revolution—Danton, the orator; Robespierre, the cold rationalist; and Desmoulins, a fellow conspirator.

 

It is 1789, and three young provincials have come to Paris to make their way. Georges-Jacques Danton, an ambitious young lawyer, is energetic, pragmatic, debt-ridden—and hugely but erotically ugly. Maximilien Robespierre, also a lawyer, is slight, diligent, and terrified of violence. His dearest friend, Camille Desmoulins, is a conspirator and pamphleteer of genius. A charming gadfly, erratic and untrustworthy, bisexual and beautiful, Camille is obsessed by one woman and engaged to marry another, her daughter. In the swells of revolution, they each taste the addictive delights of power, and the price that must be paid for it.