Publisher's Synopsis
Tirant lo Blanc"Some books take a little longer than others to make their way into the world. But 494 years?" This was the question NY Times made some years ago.Tirant lo Blanc is a book that time has done justice to, a book that even the great Cervantes already knew how to value in his intervention in Don Quixote, and that was not valued enough for not being written in a main language, becoming the masterpiece of Valencian (or Catalan) literature for centuries.Anyone who cares to dispute his greatness can argue not with me but with Cervantes. In "Don Quixote," the Spanish novelist makes one of his characters say, "I swear to you, my friend, that when it comes to style, it's the best book in the world."This classic novel was published for the first time in the Catalan language in Valencia in 1490. Its main author was Joanot Martorell, a gentleman who worked as a writer. After his death, the last quarter of the story was completed by Marti Joan de Galba, another gentleman. Martorell was primarily a combat knight who would have challenged anyone who dared to call him a man of letters to a duel (on horseback, with a spear and two swords). For a gentleman, that offensive phrase was reserved for lawyers and notaries, three of whom hang in the first 100 pages of this 600-page story. Featuring chivalric adventures, combat, romance and political manipulation, its scenes span from England to Spain and the outposts of the Byzantine empire around the Mediterranean.The fascination, the legend, the romance and the action are not lacking in a book that would mark the way to other works such as Don Quixote and that does not clash with other chivalric books such as the legends of King Arthur.In this edition we have proceeded to translate the original version by Joanot Martorell and Joan de Galba into English to make the work more universal.
