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Amazon Review
Described as a "master of the intellectual thriller", Arturo Perez-Reverte has established himself as a major figure in European fiction. The English translation of The Fencing Master, first published in Spanish in 1988, follows the critical success of The Flanders Panel and The Dumas Club. Contemplative, skilful, and--in a quiet way--melancholy, The Fencing Master is a foray into historical fiction: Perez-Reverte draws his figures against the background of a Madrid sweltering on the eve of Spain's September Revolution in 1868. Each of its eight chapters begins with an epigraph to the art which emerges as a way of interpreting the world through this novel: fencing. Jaime Astarloa, the master, has made fencing his life and legacy, and it's through his eyes--the eyes of a man who wants to resist the vulgar progress of 19th-century politics and passions--that the mystery, and tragedy, of the book unfold. It begins with a woman who wants to learn fencing--"At that moment, someone knocked at the door, and nothing would ever again be the same in the fencing master's life"--, a woman who draws Astarloa into a world of political and erotic intrigue which will test his art to the limit.--Vicky Lebeau
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