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The Scroll of Seduction

A Novel

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Manuel is a man of many talents; an art historian and professor, he is also an exquisite storyteller. When he meets 16-year-old Lucía on an outing from her boarding school, he offers to narrate a story of dire consequences—that of the Spanish Queen Juana of Castile and her legendary love for her husband, Philippe the Handsome.

Promised to Prince Philippe the Handsome to solidify ties between the Flemish and Spanish crowns, Queen Juana immediately fell in love with her betrothed with all the abandon and passion of her fiery personality. Theirs was one of the most tumultuous love stories of all time.

But Juana, who was also one of the most learned princesses of the Renaissance, was forced to pay a high price for being headstrong and daring to be herself. Those at court who could not fathom Juana as heir to the throne of the most important empire of its day conspired against her and began to question her sanity. Eventually she came to be known as Juana the Mad. But was she really insane, or just a victim of her impetuosity and unbridled passion?

As the novel unfolds, Lucía and Manuel become enmeshed in a complex psychological web that seduces and incites them to relive Juana and Philippe's story, and eventually leads them to a mysterious manuscript that may hold the key to Juana's alleged madness.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 24, 2006
      How crazy was Juana La Loca, the Spanish queen who allegedly would not stop kissing her husband, Philippe the Handsome, even after he died? A Madrid professor enlists the help of a student and a silk dress to find out in the latest from Nicaraguan poet-memoirist-novelist Belli (The Country Under My Skin
      ). While touring the Escorial, 17-year-old Lucia, a Latin American–born orphan attending a Madrid Catholic boarding school, meets Manuel, a 40-something professor who draws Lucia into his obsession with 16th-century Juana. Soon, Manuel dresses Lucia like Juana, and, as he seduces (and eventually impregnates) her, she channels Juana's spirit, allowing Belli to create—in sensuous detail—a turbulent, emotion-driven version of events that is at odds with historians' accounts of Juana's schizophrenia. Juana, as Belli depicts her, was a passionate woman who fell victim to power-hungry relatives, and whose eccentric behavior may have been symptoms of bipolar disorder. (As Belli explains in an author's note, "any woman with a strong sense of self, confronted by the abuse and the arbitrary injustices she had to withstand, forced to accept her powerlessness in the face of an authoritarian system, would become depressed.") Belli's insights into Spanish culture prove provocative, aided by Dillman's faultless translation.

    • Library Journal

      Starred review from October 1, 2014

      A strong female voice in Latin America alternates between past and present in a dual narrative of obsessive love by the 16th-century Spanish Queen Juana the Mad and her husband Philip the Handsome and their contemporary counterparts.

      Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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