Italy's greatest novel and a masterpiece of world literature, The
Betrothed chronicles the unforgettable romance of Renzo and Lucia, who
endure tyranny, war, famine, and plague to be together.
Published in 1827 but set two centuries earlier, against the tumultuous
backdrop of seventeenth-century Lombardy during the Thirty Years' War,
The Betrothed is the story of two peasant lovers who want nothing more
than to marry. Their region of northern Italy is under Spanish
occupation, and when the vicious Spaniard Don Rodrigo blocks their union
in an attempt to take Lucia for himself, the couple must struggle to
persevere against his plots--which include false charges against Renzo
and the kidnapping of Lucia by a robber baron called the Unnamed--while
beset by the hazards of war, bread riots, and a terrifying outbreak of
bubonic plague. First and foremost a love story, the novel also weaves
issues of faith, justice, power, and truth into a sweeping epic in the
tradition of Ivanhoe, Les Misérables, and War and Peace.
Groundbreakingly populist in its day and hugely influential to
succeeding generations, Alessandro Manzoni's masterwork has long been
considered one of Italy's national treasures.
Translated by Archibald Colquhoun