GajimaruClassics.
The BetrothedOn the coverThe Kiss, Francesco Hayez, 1859
The Betrothed
Two young peasants in Spanish-ruled Lombardy simply want to marry, but a cowardly priest and a predatory lord stand in their way, and famine, war, and plague sweep them apart across a whole country. Italy’s most beloved historical novel.
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Italy's national novel, a warm, sweeping, deeply humane epic of ordinary people caught in vast events, with one of literature's great plague narratives. Grand and tender at once.
SettingLombardy, 1620s
Seventeenth-century Lombardy under Spanish rule, a land of arrogant nobles, timid clergy, bread riots, and plague, where the poor have no protection but their own endurance and their faith.