The Charterhouse of Parma

Stendhal reportedly dictated this sweeping novel in a matter of weeks in 1839, and its restless energy shows on every page. Young Fabrice del Dongo, an Italian nobleman raised on dreams of Napoleon, runs off to Waterloo and wanders the battlefield without ever quite understanding the battle around him. Back in Italy he is drawn into the poisonous intrigues of the court of Parma, protected and manipulated by his passionate aunt Gina and her lover, the shrewd Count Mosca. Love, imprisonment in a high tower, and endless political scheming carry Fabrice toward an unlikely romance and a reckoning. Balzac praised it as one of the finest novels of its age, and its portrait of ambition and desire still feels startlingly modern. This free PDF and EPUB edition uses C. K. Scott Moncrieff’s translation.