All For Love Dan Jacobson by Dan Jacobson 9780141017426, 0141017422 instant download after payment.

Constantly fusing historical fact with fiction, Dan Jacobson places three extraordinary characters at the centre of an astonishing comic drama.

Full of wit, the action moves from one end to the other of pre-First World War Europe. She was a Belgian princess, the daughter of King Leopold II. He was a second lieutenant: a man of dubious origin and extravagant ambition. Cue assignations, adultery, flight, the squandering of a fortune, a duel, imprisonment, bankruptcy, morphine and madness (or alleged madness). Enter a real-life heroine - canteen worker Maria Stöger - who is no less ready than the princess and her soldier to risk all for love.

"A true tale of love and madness in Belle Epoque Vienna serves as the basis for this Booker nominee... Instead of a fairy-tale romance... this is an elegant, astute and smartly entertaining depiction of an emotional train wreck. Jacobson makes excellent use of historical research. His narrative is buttressed with informative and opinionated footnotes, and he includes telling excerpts from the memoirs of Louise and Mattachich. Histrionic and fabulously self-serving quotes from the principals are balanced by the narrator’s incisive, occasionally ironic and coolly engaging tone. An eccentric, engaging mix of melodrama and erudition."  -  Kirkus Reviews

Dan Jacobson All for Love was the penultimate book in a distinguished career that saw the South African-born Dan Jacobson produce some 26 books of varied genres and styles, but all written with rigorous attention to detail. After settling in England permanently in the late 1950s he became a colleague of A.S. Byatt’s at UCL. Jacobson’s most poignant book is Heshel’s Kingdom, an account of his fruitless search for information about his Lithuanian grandfather.