Cathedral of the Sea - Ildefonso Falcones

Written by Ildefonso Falcones
Read by Paul Michael
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Books on Tape
Release date: May 1, 2008
Duration: 23:08:24

Medieval Spain’s caste system can’t keep a good man down in this absorbing epic, a Spanish-language bestseller.

Arnau Estanyol, son of a fugitive peasant, starts out in 14th-century Barcelona as a lowly porter who carries stone blocks to a cathedral construction site and ends up a rich moneylender who saves the city from pillaging and frees the serfs of a barony he acquires by marriage. Alas, his dizzying social assent and defiance of the feudal order provoke enraged aristocrats—his status-obsessed wife included—into siccing the Inquisition on him.

Arnau is a kindhearted, somewhat passive figure that combines piety, industry and cosmopolitanism to challenge a corrupt, dogmatic church and parasitic nobility. The plot features thwarted romance, war, plague, immolations and self-immolations, set in a Machiavellian world ruled by privilege, cronyism and brute force. The melodrama is sometimes laid on thick, but Falcones’s rich portrait of medieval society is fascinating.

“Narrator Paul Michael uses a range of vaguely European-sounding accents to portray the story’s nobles and peasants. His smooth pronunciation of Spanish and French names surely renders the audiobook less cumbersome than the written tome. Michael’s clear, masculine voice is well suited to the extensive narrative passages describing life in medieval Barcelona: war, plague, the supremacy of the aristocracy, and the Spanish Inquisition… This translation is a gem, employing elegantly simple language to portray a significant era.”–AudioFile