Customer Reviews

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

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Like any great novel the characters become more compelling than the otherwise fascinating backdrop of Paris during the early stages of WW I. The story centers around a family who returns to France after one generation's absence and must come to terms with themselves and each other. This book was written during the last part of the war and the sadness of the reality of the war is evident in the book. Don't let the slow beginning fool you, the rest of the book is worth your effort.

I love this book. I read it many years ago...The beginning starts off peacefully, like a romance, you become part of the scenerios, you fall in love with the characters...Then all of a sudden there is war (World War 1)...This novel is about people in that epoch, about tango dancing, about France and Argentina. About money and the pampas...About Germany...In fact about all of Europe...It is about an epoch in which people thought the world would end in war and genocide and everyone was just trying to have sex and fall in love and live life to the fullest before it all came to an end...The name Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse which is a phrase taken from the last book in the Bible which talks about Armageddon (better known as "the end of the world." This book is like a mix of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy and Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell, only better. The English translation of this book is so true to the original...nothing, absolutely nothing, is lost in translation here....Read this book if you want to read great literature.

I was spurred to read this book because the 1921 film adaptation is so great; usually I read the book before seeing the movie based on it, if I see the movie based on a book at all. The book is even better than the already phenomenal film; since the film is only about two hours long, it obviously couldn't fit in everything that happens in the book, and there were some things invented, left out, or cut and pasted together (in a respectful tasteful way though). The book gives an even more complete and complex picture of the Desnoyers family and their circle of friends, like having a lot more details about their life in Argentina before Julio, the main character, his sister Chichi, and their cousins the von Hartrotts were born, as well as having more details about their life back in Europe when they returned there shortly before WWI broke out. Having the powerful images from the film in my head made the characters, plotline, and descriptions in the book even more powerful. There were also some things that the book made clearer than the film had, although personally I felt that the ending line of the book wasn't as powerful or effective as the final intertitles of the movie. Still, it's a great book, powerful historical fiction about WWI and the years leading up to it. My only gripe is that this translation is a bit dated, such as in certain words or turns of phrase that now have different connotations or have fallen into such disusage that the modern reader would have to look them up. It doesn't change the powerful content one iota, but it would still be nice to have an updated translation with more modern language and some explanatory footnotes where needed.