Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Neue Arabische Nächte
Für wen es gedacht ist
For readers who love quick plots, odd settings and a dry, playful voice, and anyone who wants a gateway to Stevenson before Treasure Island.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
New Arabian Nights is a book of stories by Robert Louis Stevenson, first gathered in 1882 after most of the tales had appeared in magazines. The title is a joke with a purpose. The old Arabian Nights took readers to bazaars and palaces far away. Stevenson takes them to London squares, Paris alleys and the windy Scottish coast, and finds that wonder is hiding there too.
The book holds two linked cycles and four single tales. The Suicide Club and The Rajah's Diamond follow a Bohemian prince who wanders in disguise. Then come The Pavilion on the Links, A Lodging for the Night, The Sire de Maletroit's Door and Providence and the Guitar. You get plots with secret societies, hunted men, a night in medieval Paris and two wandering singers. You also get a narrator who clearly enjoys himself. Let us begin with the strangest idea in the book, a club for people who want to die.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1A prince finds a club for the doomedFree
- 2The club's rules close in on a stranger
- 3A great diamond passes through ordinary hands
- 4A fugitive hides in a seaside pavilion
- 5Two nights, two doors, two young men
- 6Singers on the road and a storyteller's art
Punkt 1 von 6
A prince finds a club for the doomed
The first cycle, The Suicide Club, opens in London with a young man who stands in the street offering cream tarts to passers-by. He politely tells each one that if they refuse, he will eat the tarts himself. This is his small joke before a larger one. He has spent his money, he has nothing to live for, and he is wandering the city with an odd kind of cheerfulness.
Into his path come two gentlemen who are far more than they seem. One is Prince Florizel of Bohemia, a ruler who likes to slip out in plain clothes and look for adventure. The other is his friend and companion, Colonel Geraldine. They are bored with palace life, and the young man with the tarts promises them something new. He takes them to a private club where the members have one thing in common.
The club is a place where men tired of life come to end it, under rules and with a kind of grim politeness. Members are admitted by the President, who runs the house. The visitors give false names and the young man's story pulls them in. Stevenson uses a drawing-room tone for a horrible subject, and that mix is what makes the tale uneasy and funny at once.
The prince, who is not at all tired of life, finds himself thrown into the very place he came to watch. The reader is told how admission works and how the evening is arranged, and the cold order of it is meant to chill. By the end of this first story you know the danger is real. You also know that Florizel is too curious and too proud to walk away.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
- Nothing to pay today · Renews every year
- We email you before you pay
- Cancel online in two clicks