18 h 47 minAudiobook15 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if your only wish is to marry, but a powerful man decides your future belongs to him?
In seventeenth-century Lombardy, Renzo Tramaglino and Lucia Mondella want a wedding, not a struggle with power. But the nobleman Don Rodrigo wants Lucia, and his threats frighten their priest, Don Abbondio, into refusing the marriage. In Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed, a young couple’s simple hope meets a world where the law favours the strong and fear silences everyone else.
Lucia’s practical mother, Agnese, searches for a way forward, while Fra Cristoforo works to protect the poor from powerful men. Around them, hunger, war and disease threaten ordinary lives. Manzoni’s warm, wry narrator follows peasants, priests and nobles with a sharp eye for cowardice and pride, asking what faith and decency can do when injustice seems to hold every advantage.
What you’ll discover
- Love under threat Follow Renzo and Lucia as a blocked wedding puts their hopes and safety at risk.
- An evening by the lake Meet a frightened priest whose encounter with two armed men sets the story in motion.
- Quiet strength and practical courage Discover Lucia’s resolve, Agnese’s resourcefulness and a friar’s determination to stand beside the vulnerable.
- A society laid bare See how threats and favours serve the powerful while ordinary people struggle to be heard.
- A narrator with warmth Enjoy dry humour and thoughtful pauses that bring human weakness into clear, compassionate focus.
Who will love it
For readers who love humane novels with a wide social canvas, and anyone curious about Italy and its history. Its love story brings together faith, conscience and ordinary people's courage against unjust power.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A priest meets two armed men
- A friar who carries his past
- A secret wedding and a night flight
- Two separate roads: Monza and Milan
- A kidnapping and a night of terror
- Cardinal Federigo and a change of heart
- Power, justice and the little people
- Famine, war and plague as characters
- A found manuscript and a wry narrator
Who’s who
- Renzo TramaglinoA young silk weaver, honest and hot-tempered, who wants only to marry Lucia and learns the hard way how power and the law work.
- Lucia MondellaA modest, devout village girl, promised to Renzo, whose quiet strength holds firm when powerful men seek to take her away.
- Don AbbondioThe village curate, timid and self-protecting, who refuses to perform the wedding because he fears the threats of armed men.
- Don RodrigoA local nobleman, proud and spiteful, who sets his will on Lucia and uses his men and his friends to get her.
- Fra CristoforoA Capuchin friar, once a violent young merchant's son, who now spends his life protecting the poor from men like Rodrigo.
- AgneseLucia's mother, a shrewd and practical widow, who devises plans and gives the young couple advice in time of danger.
- The UnnamedA feared lord whose crimes are known across the region, though no one dares speak his name, and who is troubled by his conscience.
- Cardinal Federigo BorromeoThe archbishop of Milan, a learned and generous man, who deals with sinners and with timid priests alike through patient kindness.
Formats and delivery
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- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 18 h 47 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 15 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear Die Verlobten in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Die Verlobten
by Alessandro Manzoni · 1827
Renzo and Lucia want only to marry, but a local lord drives them into a world of riots, kidnapping and plague.
Challenging10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
The Betrothed is a novel by the Italian writer Alessandro Manzoni. It was first published in 1827 and then reworked for a new edition in the early 1840s.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A priest meets two armed men
The story opens in November 1628 on a road near Lake Como. Don Abbondio, the village curate, is walking home reading his prayers when he sees two bravos waiting for him. Bravos are hired thugs who serve a powerful lord. They tell him, in plain and menacing words, that the wedding he is to perform the next day must not take place.
The wedding is that of Renzo Tramaglino, a young silk weaver, and Lucia Mondella, a girl of the same village. Both are honest and hardworking, and they have waited only for a priest to bless them. The man behind the threat is Don Rodrigo, a local nobleman who has taken an interest in Lucia. Part of his motive is lust, and part is a bet with his cousin, a wager that he can have what he likes.
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What is The Betrothed about?
It follows Renzo and Lucia, two young villagers in Lombardy in the late 1620s, whose wedding is forbidden by a local lord. They are separated and caught up in riots, kidnapping, war and plague.
Is The Betrothed a true story?
No, the main characters and plot are invented. But Manzoni set it in real history, including the Milan bread riot of 1628 and the plague of 1630, and he used actual chronicles. Cardinal Federigo Borromeo was a real person.
When was The Betrothed written?
Manzoni published the first version in 1827, and then revised it heavily for a new edition in the early 1840s. He changed much of the language to match educated Florentine speech.
The author
Alessandro Manzoni
1785–1873 · Italian novelist and poet
Alessandro Manzoni was an Italian writer and poet born in Milan in 1785. He lived in Paris from 1805 to 1810, then returned to Milan. He wrote poems, plays, and the novel The Betrothed, published in 1827 and revised for publication in 1840–1842. He died in Milan in 1873.
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