The Visit Of The Royal Physician

Adultery, insanity, enlightenment and the bluest blood - this compelling and prize-winning historical novel exposes the seamy underside of eighteenth-century Denmark.

One of the most dramatic and memorable historical novels to have hit these shores in years...Fierce, direct, imbued with wintry, windswept poetry, Enquist's style makes 18th-century court intrigue as rough and raucous as a mafia feud

One of those rare, magical books that creates its own world so modestly that it is only halfway through that you realise you have been entranced

An impressive historical novel...brilliantly mixing motifs of madness, role-playing and control

was hard to put down.  Love, idealism, corruption and insanity in the Danish court of the Enlightenment: the world he draws is so complete, it s a very absorbing read.

Per Olov Enquist is one of Sweden's most acclaimed writers: a novelist, playwright and poet with works published in 26 countries. The Visit of the Royal Physician is his first novel since Captain Nemo's Library in the early 90s.

An award-winning historical novel exposing the scandals of eighteenth-century Denmark, weaving a wide range of historical characters from Voltaire to Catherine the Great to George III 
 
It is the 1760s, the height of the Enlightenment. The young King of Denmark, Christian VII, is a half-wit. His queen, the English princess Caroline Mathilde, has fallen in love with his most trusted advisor, the court physician Struensee. Guldberg, a cold-blooded religious fanatic, is determined to annihilate the Enlightenment ideas Struensee is introducing to Denmark - whoever prevails in their bitter ideological battle will control not only the king but the nation state. 
 
With adultery, insanity, enlightenment and the bluest blood, Enquist brilliantly recasts a dramatic era of Danish history into a tale of ruthless political ambition and personal betrayal. 
 
‘One of those rare, magical books that creates its own world so modestly that it is only halfway through that you realise you have been entranced’ Telegraph

Per Olov Enquist

Tiina Nunnally

He is one of the contemporary novel's greatest human investigators

The glimpsed idea of a wider, more poetic sensibility linking art, death, reading and love

Enquist brings out the sad sorority of two women who suffered grotesquely for love and work

Anyone who read Per Olov Enquists dazzling novel...The Visit of the Royal Physician...will not be surprised to hear that he has written another fascinating, highly charged miracle of compression...Fiction rarely gets more interesting than this

Dizzy with associations and questions, full of interest and appetite and the satisfactions of a good mind...often funny

Dense, perverse and fascinating biographical fiction

Blanche's story is tragic and this part fact/part fiction account of her relationship with Nobel Prize-winning scientist Marie Curie is touching and disturbing... thought provoking and original

Enquist weaves fact and fiction with such skill that his novel sometimes reads like a historical account of true events

He treats these big themes with miniaturist care and attention, while his characters, trapped in history like insects in amber, are deeply and sympathetically observed...The result is exhilarating, elliptical, concise, dense, and richly rewarding

In 1878, Blanche Wittman was committed to Salpêtrière Hospital as an hysteric and placed in the care of the famous M. Charcot, who regularly displayed her, in a cataleptic state, before a public audience. Over time, the nature of her participation in these demonstrations changed; she graduated from patient to assistant and on leaving the hospital, was hired by Marie Curie to work in her Paris laboratory. 
 
On 17 February 1898, radium was discovered and Blanche's exposure to it necessitated the amputation of all her limbs, save one. As for Marie, her husband and collaborator Pierre was weakened by illness and subsequently killed having wandered in front of an oncoming horse and cart. 
 
Following this, she embarked on an ill-fated love affair, which, in 1911, almost cost her the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Using Blanche's notebooks - 'The Book of Questions' - Enquist deftly weaves fact and fiction in a powerful tale of scientific discovery, death, art love and the extraordinary relationship of two remarkable women at the dawn of a century of tremendous change. 
 
The Story of Blanche and Marie was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Per Olov Enquist

Praise for The Story of Blanche and Marie

He is one of the contemporary novel's greatest human investigators

The glimpsed idea of a wider, more poetic sensibility linking art, death, reading and love

Enquist brings out the sad sorority of two women who suffered grotesquely for love and work

He is one of the contemporary novel's greatest human investigators

The glimpsed idea of a wider, more poetic sensibility linking art, death, reading and love

Enquist brings out the sad sorority of two women who suffered grotesquely for love and work

He is one of the contemporary novel's greatest human investigators

The glimpsed idea of a wider, more poetic sensibility linking art, death, reading and love

Enquist brings out the sad sorority of two women who suffered grotesquely for love and work

Books by Per Olov Enquist

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