{"product_id":"furioso-by-voldemar-lestienne","title":"'Furioso' by Voldemar Lestienne","description":"\u003ch4 data-start=\"0\" data-end=\"454\"\u003ePitched as an 'updated' version of The Three Musketeers, though, it's hard to see the line drawn once it fully starts going.\u003c\/h4\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVoldemar Lestienne’s \u003cem data-start=\"21\" data-end=\"30\"\u003eFurioso\u003c\/em\u003e is a world full of soldiers, gas chambers, mystery women, bath-water, broken bottles, sexual humiliation, bureaucratic violence and a kind of manic theatricality that makes the whole thing feel as if fascism has been rewritten as a feverish domestic opera.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"456\" data-end=\"962\"\u003eThe prose moves quickly and oddly, with absurd set-pieces sliding into brutality before anyone has time to behave sensibly. There is something of the postwar European grotesque here: history not as solemn lesson, but as contamination, slapstick, erotic panic, bad faith and costume.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"456\" data-end=\"962\"\u003eNot a polite novel, and probably not a book for someone looking for tidy moral architecture. More for the reader who likes their fiction rancid, sharp, unstable and wearing evening gloves while setting fire to the curtains.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"973\" data-end=\"1190\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eW. H. Allen English translation, 1972; originally published by Librairie Arthème Fayard in 1971. Printed boards, dust jacket present. Light rubbing and edge wear to boards, pages lightly toned, clean readable copy.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"bower studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44656209330259,"sku":null,"price":20.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/0268\/2707\/files\/Yourparagraphtext-2026-05-25T170703.685.png?v=1779692846","url":"https:\/\/bowerbooks.com\/products\/furioso-by-voldemar-lestienne","provider":"bower books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}