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The Scroll of Seduction: A Novel Kindle Edition

4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 46 ratings

Manuel is a man of many talents; an art historian and professor, he is also an exquisite storyteller. When he meets 16-year-old Lucía on an outing from her boarding school, he offers to narrate a story of dire consequences—that of the Spanish Queen Juana of Castile and her legendary love for her husband, Philippe the Handsome.

Promised to Prince Philippe the Handsome to solidify ties between the Flemish and Spanish crowns, Queen Juana immediately fell in love with her betrothed with all the abandon and passion of her fiery personality. Theirs was one of the most tumultuous love stories of all time.

But Juana, who was also one of the most learned princesses of the Renaissance, was forced to pay a high price for being headstrong and daring to be herself. Those at court who could not fathom Juana as heir to the throne of the most important empire of its day conspired against her and began to question her sanity. Eventually she came to be known as Juana the Mad. But was she really insane, or just a victim of her impetuosity and unbridled passion?

As the novel unfolds, Lucía and Manuel become enmeshed in a complex psychological web that seduces and incites them to relive Juana and Philippe's story, and eventually leads them to a mysterious manuscript that may hold the key to Juana's alleged madness.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

How crazy was Juana La Loca, the Spanish queen who allegedly would not stop kissing her husband, Philippe the Handsome, even after he died? A Madrid professor enlists the help of a student and a silk dress to find out in the latest from Nicaraguan poet-memoirist-novelist Belli (The Country Under My Skin). While touring the Escorial, 17-year-old Lucia, a Latin American–born orphan attending a Madrid Catholic boarding school, meets Manuel, a 40-something professor who draws Lucia into his obsession with 16th-century Juana. Soon, Manuel dresses Lucia like Juana, and, as he seduces (and eventually impregnates) her, she channels Juana's spirit, allowing Belli to create—in sensuous detail—a turbulent, emotion-driven version of events that is at odds with historians' accounts of Juana's schizophrenia. Juana, as Belli depicts her, was a passionate woman who fell victim to power-hungry relatives, and whose eccentric behavior may have been symptoms of bipolar disorder. (As Belli explains in an author's note, "any woman with a strong sense of self, confronted by the abuse and the arbitrary injustices she had to withstand, forced to accept her powerlessness in the face of an authoritarian system, would become depressed.") Belli's insights into Spanish culture prove provocative, aided by Dillman's faultless translation. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Belli's rigorously imagined and sumptuously presented novel is a dual story of obsessive love, with a bi-level plot alternating between past and present. From the past, the author retrieves the almost legendary tale of Queen Juana of Castile, eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, and her alleged madness caused by the premature death of her handsome husband, Philip of Hapsburg. The contemporary story line is also set in Spain; over a period of time and in piecemeal fashion, a teenage student in a convent school, Lucia by name, learns from a college professor, who will become her first lover, of his own obsession: Queen Juana and her life story, specifically the unanswerable question of whether she was insane or simply the victim of a smear campaign by the male forces at court who would seek to control her. The professor, as if Scheherazade, tells Lucia a series of episodes concerning the tragic queen so Lucia may internalize Juana's plight, all the while executing his seduction of her. Male manipulation of the female, as we see, is hardly a thing of the past. A balance between the two time levels is carefully maintained, the contemporary story intensifying the viability of the characters from the past--all this carried along, as if down a lovely stream, by the sheer beauty of the author's prose style. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B000JMKTV4
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperCollins e-books; Reprint edition (October 13, 2009)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 13, 2009
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1.8 MB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0060833130
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 46 ratings

About the author

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Gioconda Belli
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Gioconda Belli es una de las voces femeninas de la literatura nicaragüense pioneras de la poesía revolucionaria y de la revolución misma. Coherencia y unidad caracterizan su expresión poética. En 1988 publicó su primera novela, La mujer habitada, traducida a catorce idiomas, y publicada en Estados Unidos y Alemania, donde vendió un millón de ejemplares. Ha recibido entre otros, los siguientes premios por su labor literaria: Premio La otra orilla 2010, 50º Biblioteca Breve otorgado por la editorial Seix Barral en España, 2008; Premio Casa de las Américas (Cuba); Premio Internacional de Poesía Generación del ‘27 (España) y Premio Anna Seghers de la Academia de Artes de Alemania. Desde agosto de 2004 es miembro de la Real Academia de la Lengua, Capítulo de Nicaragua.

Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
46 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book engaging and well-written. They appreciate the mystery content, describing it as a great read that leaves them puzzled. The book explores Spanish history with a contemporary touch.

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5 customers mention "Readability"5 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and well-written. They describe it as one of Belli's best works, though some issues exist.

"This book was absolutely amazing! The story of Juana is told wonderfully. Bring reality and fiction into one magical world!" Read more

"...Though it's a very absorbing book "Scroll" has some issues...." Read more

"Worth reading. A good research of Spanish history with a contemporary touch that makes the novel intriguing and yet educational...." Read more

"A great read - one of Belli's best." Read more

3 customers mention "Mystery content"3 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the mystery content in the book. They find the premise interesting and the writing engaging. The book offers good research into Spanish history with a contemporary touch.

"...The Scroll of Seduction" is a novel riddled with questions and mysteries, pilled atop on another...." Read more

"Worth reading. A good research of Spanish history with a contemporary touch that makes the novel intriguing and yet educational...." Read more

"Interesting premise to the story. Good writing. I was engaged." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2013
    This book was absolutely amazing! The story of Juana is told wonderfully. Bring reality and fiction into one magical world!
    2 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2008
    I have always considered history to be the greatest mystery there is. Not the actual mysteries of history (who or what killed Attila the Hun, what happened to the Princes in the tower, was troy a real place...) but the notion that it is impossible to really understand history. Sure we can study it, learn the dates and the names and the places of importance, read documents, form theories-but will we ever understand the real mind of a single person who lived in an era not our own? It's so hard to even comprehend our contemporaries sometimes!

    It's that question which lead me to read this novel. It's the story of two people who meet quite by accident-Manuel, a history teacher who is subbing for a tour guide friend and Lucia a sixteen year old boarding school student who happens to have Manuel as her guide when her grandparents visits Madrid (where she lives) and take a historical tour. After another accidental meeting Manuel and Lucia strike up a friendship, despite the difference in their ages, based on a love of history. Manuel seizes the opportunity to have Lucia participate in an experiment of a most unusual nature-he will tell her the story of Queen Juana "the mad" but if, and only if, she will imagine herself to be Juana, to feel what she felt, think what she thought. And dress they way she dressed, a in a red renaissance silk and velvet dress.

    Lucia, an introverted orphan on the very edge of adulthood, is intrigued and goes along with it. But soon the experiment changes her life in unexpected ways as she becomes more involved in the story of Juana and her husband, Philip the Handsome, and with Manuel and his own curious and secret riddled family history.

    "The Scroll of Seduction" is a novel riddled with questions and mysteries, pilled atop on another. Intellectual questions (Was Juana mad, or merely ahead of her time in the act of non-violent protest and rebellion? Can love drive you mad? Can recorded history ever be truly accurate? Can a person from one age understand one from another-especially one far removed from their own? ) as well as ones pertaining to the story (what does Manuel really want with Lucia? Will he play the story out to its terrible ending? Will his linage effect how he sees and treats Lucia as Juana in the end? What exactly is his relationship with his aunt-and why is he so determined in the end that Lucia must not leave his fortress/museum of a house?) that keep you guessing and reading, completely absorbed in the increasingly creepy atmosphere until the very last page.

    Though it's a very absorbing book "Scroll" has some issues. It tends towards dry passages with a lot of narration on the part of Lucia/Juana with very little action and inadequate descriptions of the scenery (especially for someone who has never seen Spain or Brussels.) The dialog can also be a little dry but ultimately the building suspense cancels all that out (and kept me reading.) However if you're not inclined to read books with a lot of academic questions (and not a lot of plot movement in spite of the two stories involved) then I wouldn't recommend reading this.

    Other than, four stars.
    6 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on November 29, 2017
    A gift to someone else. No complaints forthcoming yet....
  • Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2008
    Worth reading. A good research of Spanish history with a contemporary touch that makes the novel intriguing and yet educational. Easy to read, once you start reading it you can put it down.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2018
    A great read - one of Belli's best.
  • Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2015
    Excellent, well written.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2016
    Interesting premise to the story. Good writing. I was engaged.
  • Reviewed in the United States on June 28, 2021
    I wanted to read some historical read, but the plot here is not exactly this. It started excellent, but it turned out to be pure dark romance, which is not that bad, until you reach the end. The end lacks any logic and it is rushed and stupid. It spoils the whole story.

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