Novel
The Queen's Diadem
Drottningens juvelsmycke
Carl Jonas Love Almqvist · 1834
Synopsis
Stockholm, 1792. Around the assassination of Gustav III at the masked ball, the destinies of five young people intertwine: the sisters Adolfine and Amanda, their suitors Ferdinand and Clas-Henrik, caught up in the plot, and Tintomara, daughter of a former Opera actress, a young being of singular beauty, neither man nor woman. After the murder, all flee the capital for the forests of Kolmården, where Tintomara, disguised as a boy, awakens the love of both sisters and both young men.
Context
The novel appeared in 1834 in the fourth volume of the long series that the author published from 1832 to 1851 under the title of the Book of the Wild Rose. Together with another of his novels, in which a woman lives with a man without marrying him, it led to the author being condemned by Church and State as a dangerous revolutionary. Tintomara has remained one of the best-loved characters of this literature, and Hans Abramson made a film of it in 1970. Elena Balzamo translated it into French for José Corti in 1996; Yvonne Sandstroem had translated it into English in 1992.
Who it is for
A novel of a little over four hundred pages in the French edition; it can be read in French in Elena Balzamo's translation.
Prizes and reception
The first original historical novel written in Sweden, and its author's most famous work.
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