Theodoros

The Emperor of Africa, the English Queen Victoria, Tudor, an inquisitive child, the Queen of Sheba: in 33 chapters, Cărtărescu combines the historical, the fantastic and the philosophical with terrifyingly beautiful adventure stories. He creates nothing less than a whole new world that extends right up to our own times, right up to the Last Judgement. ‘The pistol barrel still in his mouth, brains scattered on the red table.’ Before the British colonial army reduced the mountain fortress of Magdala to rubble and could take him hostage, the Ethiopian emperor put an end to his life on Easter Sunday 1868.  But not as a crowned despot, not as a plundering pirate, but as a boyar servant from Wallachia, at least according to Mircea Cărtărescu’s latest breathtaking novel.