Lalka

The Doll, volume 1

De: Bolesław Prus, Alistair Penhale

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Warsaw, spring 1878. An open carriage rides through the spring sunshine toward a store on Krakowskie Przedmieście. Inside sits Izabela Łęcka: beautiful, proud, and poor. Her family has just had to sell the silver service, and she knows who bought it.
She is convinced that he went to war solely for her sake, and that he has returned rich to win her over. “Does he want to buy me?” she says. “Fine. Then he’ll find out just how expensive I am.”
As a boy, Stanisław Wokulski started out as a waiter in a restaurant. Now he can buy anything for sale in Warsaw: a racehorse on race day, her father’s house at an auction, a place among counts and princes. Only the woman he loves cannot be bought.
The higher he climbs, the higher the price becomes. A lawsuit ensues over a stolen doll. In Paris, he meets a scholar with an invention that could change everything. And in the shop, old Rzecki keeps track of everything in his diary, loyal to the man he knows better than anyone else.
Bolesław Prus himself lived in this Warsaw. He witnessed the nobility’s decline and the rise of the nouveau riche, and he described it without sparing anyone.
Lalka, a magnificent novel: now in contemporary language.
He could afford everything—except her.

HISTORICA