The Glorious Ones: A Novel

Francine Prose

Sept 2013 · Open Road Media

About this eBook

The story of a troupe of actors in seventeenth-century Italy, from “one of a handful of truly indispensable American writers” (Gary Shteyngart).

The Glorious Ones are an unlikely troupe of actors, traveling up and down the seventeenth-century Italian countryside performing commedia dell’arte for kings, for peasants, for anyone with coin. There is Armanda, the cheerful dwarf and ex-nun; chattering Columbina; Pantalone the miser; and the wicked Brighella—all led by Flaminio Scala, the self-proclaimed most courageous man in Christendom.

But for all their wild differences, not one of them is prepared for the arrival of Isabella, their mysterious new director, who is about to turn their whole world upside down.

Dramatic and imaginative, this tale of adventure, love, and theater is a historical romp from the award-winning, New York Times–bestselling author of novels, including Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, and Household Saints, as well as the literary guide book Reading Like a Writer.

About the author

DIVFrancine Prose is the author of sixteen novels, including A Changed Man, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel, a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. A former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Prose is a highly regarded critic and essayist, and has taught literature and writing for more than twenty years at major universities. She is a distinguished writer in residence at Bard College, and she lives in New York City./div