The shadow of the guillotine

"More than historical fiction, a fascinating study of power and the price it costs." - Cosmopolitan The French Revolution is perfect fodder for historical dramas. Just ask Alexandre Dumas and Charles Dickens. English author Hilary Mantel follows in the tradition of these two great masters of world literature and creates, in THE SHADOW OF THE GUILLOTINE, a complex novel and, at the same time, an incredible work of imagination that reveals scenes with which not even the best historians could compete. It is in unstable and vigorous France that the fate of three young provincials, whose friendship was forged under the Ancien Régime, is forged: Camille Desmoulins, a charismatic and unstable man, an inveterate conspirator, and a genius writer; Georges Jacques Danton, a brilliant lawyer who knew how to attract and wield power, eager to make his mark on the world; and Maximilien Robespierre, whose ambition and idealism helped unleash the Terror. It is their passions and betrayals that become the pillars of the Revolution. Their feelings and ambitions will destroy a way of life and, as a consequence, help to destroy themselves, crushed under the power they created. Bringing to life late 18th-century Paris with its opulent court, its beggars, vendors, and cafés, THE SHADOW OF THE GUILLOTINE is the account of the dizzying beginning of the French Revolution seen through the eyes of the men involved in the downfall of an entire way of life. Considered the most perfect novel ever written about the French Revolution, THE SHADOW OF THE GUILLOTINE won the Sunday Express Book of the Year award.