The Charterhouse of Parma

A young nobleman crosses Napoleonic Europe and the intrigues of a tiny Italian court. The map runs across northern Italy: Milan under the French, the family castle on Lake Como, and the little despotic state of Parma with its citadel prison, where the story ends in a monastery. One scene falls far outside the setting, at Waterloo in Belgium, where the hero wanders the battle without ever grasping it.

Fabrizio del Dongo

Milan under Napoleon

Chapter 1

The book opens as the French army enters Milan and wakes the sleepy Lombard city to a new age. Fabrizio del Dongo is born into this excitement, a boy raised on the legend of Napoleon while his reactionary father sulks in the family palace. The Cisalpine enthusiasm of these years sets the whole restless course of his life.

Chapter 1

explicit The novel opens in Milan, named directly; the coordinates mark the historic centre of the city.

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