A Case of Curiosities (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Allen Kurzweil
- First Published: 1992
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1780-1790
- Setting: Tournay and Paris, France; and Geneva, Switzerland
- Principal Characters: Claude Page, Juliette Cordant Page, Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Robert Auget, Adolphe Staemphli, Paul Dome, Sebastian Plumeaux, Lucien Livre, Alexandre Hélène Hugon, Marguerite
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: Culture, United States or Americans, Journalism or journalists, Politics, Europe or Europeans, Poetry or poets, Drama or dramatists
- Locales: Paris, France, Geneva, Switzerland
Eighteenth century deists compared the world to a watch, an analogy well suited to this historical novel, in which the main character creates ingenious mechanisms, including timepieces. The book thus reflects the age in which it is set; it is also very much a postmodern text, as concerned with its own composition as with the story it has to tell. This duality pervades the work, which emerges as at once art and artifice. Like the devices that Claude Page creates, the novel delights in two ways. On the surface, one can enjoy the movement of the figures, the characters’ actions, but one...
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