The Manuscript Found in Saragossa

THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA

‘A Polish classic… constructed like a Chinese box of tales… It
reads like the most brilliant modern novel’ – Salman Rushdie in
the Guardian

‘One of the great masterpieces of European literature… this new
translation offers us the work as a whole in English for the first time,
in the dizzyingly elaborate form envisioned by the author’s
extraordinary imagination’ – Larry Wolff in The New York Times
Book Review

‘The translation by Ian Maclean is crisp, lucid and unfussy… A
beautiful volume, underlining Potocki’s forgotten masterpiece as a
work of real substance’ – James Woodall in The Times

‘A picaresque ramble through Islam and the inquisition… This is
the stuff of reading on a grand scale, fiction of enduring splendour’
– David Hughes in the Mail on Sunday

‘Impossible to put down’ - Katherine A. Powers in the Boston Globe

‘A bravura translation… the 100 or so stories told over 66 “Days”
are fantastic, ghostly, erotic, comic, ghoulish, philosophical and
Munchausenly tall’ - David Coward in the Sunday Telegraph

‘This volume is excellent value, two dozen fresh and ingenious tales
for the price of a novel’ - Julian Duplain in the Times
Literary Supplement

‘At its most magical The Manuscript Found in Saragossa reads like The
Arabian Nights, at its most italianate like something from The
Decameron… a masterwork of European romanticism’ - Michael
Dirda in the Washington Post Book World

‘One of the strangest books ever written can at last take its rightful
place in world literature’ - Kola Krauze in the Guardian

ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND TRANSLATOR

JAN POTOCKI was born in Poland in 1761 into a very great aristocratic family, which owned vast estates. He was educated in Geneva and Lausanne, served twice in the army and spent some time as a novice Knight of Malta. During his lifetime he was an indefatigable traveller and travel-writer, an Egyptologist and pioneering ethnologist, an occultist and an historian of the pre-Slavic peoples. He was a political activist and probably a freemason, although he seems to have espoused a bafflingly wide range of political causes, some of them patriotic. Among his other exploits were an ascent in a balloon over Warsaw with the aeronaut Blanchard and the provision of the first free press in that city.

Potocki was proficient in many different languages, and his extensive travels led him through the Mediterranean, the Balkans, the Caucasus and China. He married twice (the first marriage ending in divorce) and had five children: scandalous rumours surrounded both of his marriages. In 1812 he retired to his estates in Poland, suffering from chronic ill health, melancholia and disillusionment. He committed suicide in 1815. Although the exact details of his end are uncertain, the most credible story is that he blew his brains out with a silver bullet, which was modelled from the knob of his sugar-bowl and first blessed by the castle chaplain.

IAN MACLEAN is Reader in French at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Queen’s College.

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa

JAN POTOCKI

TRANSLATED BY IAN MACLEAN

BookishMall.com

in memoriam absentium
J. N. M. M. J. W. M. E. M. D. E. M. M. W. B. H.

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Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Private Bag 102902, NSMC, Auckland, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

First modern edition published in French 1989
This translation first published by Viking 1995
Published in Penguin Books 1996
13

The moral right of the translator has been asserted

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject
to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

Introduction

Translator’s Note

A Note on the Geographical Location

Glossary

A Guide to the Stories

THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA

Foreword

The First Day

The story of Emina and her sister Zubeida

The story of the castle of Cassar Gomelez

The Second Day

The story of Pacheco the demoniac