A Thorny Path — Volume 12

Georg Moritz EbersProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.3
Word count
95K words
Chapters
10

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Fate TestLove EntanglementsPower GameHuman NatureComplex HumanityGrowing UpClassic NarrativeSerialized FictionAncient WorldExotic Culture

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.A Thorny Path — Volume 12 by Georg EbersAuthor: Ebers, Georg, 1837-1898,Language: English, Class: PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures, Release Date: Apr 1, 2004

Editor's review

A Thorny Path — Volume 12 is the twelfth installment of German author Georg Ebers's long historical novel, released by Project Gutenberg as a free public-domain ebook. As one of the representative works of nineteenth-century German historical fiction, Ebers excels at unfolding his characters' fates against grand ancient settings, and this volume continues the narrative arc of the whole book, with relationships and conflicts converging more tightly in its later stages. For Chinese readers, its value lies more at the documentary and research level: it offers a window onto the narrative paradigms of nineteenth-century European historical fiction and onto how Project Gutenberg preserves public-domain texts. Note that it is not a standalone book but one volume of a larger work, and reading it out of context weakens understanding. It suits use as supplementary material for foreign-literature study, popular writing on classical civilization, or research on public-domain ebooks, and is not recommended as light recreational reading.

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Reading tips

  1. Confirm you have read the previous dozen or so volumes before starting this one, or character threads will easily break.
  2. Keep notes on character relationships and the timeline as you read to help track the multi-stranded narrative.
  3. Read alongside background material on Roman history and early Christianity to lower the threshold of understanding.
  4. If reading only for research, read the opening and closing chapters first, then fill in the middle plot.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10

FAQ

Can this volume be read on its own? Not recommended. It is the twelfth volume of A Thorny Path, and its characters and plot carry over from earlier text; reading it alone leaves you without necessary background. If you only want an overview, consult an introduction to the whole book first, then decide whether to read it through in order.
What language is the book in, and how can Chinese readers obtain it? The original is in English, released free by Project Gutenberg as a public-domain ebook and downloadable from its website. Chinese readers need some English reading ability or tool assistance; available information does not indicate an official Chinese translation.
What kind of writer is Ebers? Georg Ebers (1837–1898) was a German author known for historical novels set in antiquity. This volume is one installment of his long historical novel, in a style marked by the detailed scene-setting and character development common to nineteenth-century historical fiction.
What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition? Project Gutenberg, the earliest project to offer free ebooks, was founded by Michael Hart in 1971. This edition is an electronic transcription of a public-domain text, convenient for searching and citation, but it usually contains no modern scholarly notes or introduction, so readers must supply background material themselves.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Georg Moritz Ebers Author · German · 1837–1898

Georg Ebers (1837–1898) was a German Egyptologist and novelist. Born in Berlin in 1837, he served as a professor at the University of Leipzig. His major contribution to Egyptology was the discovery, editing, and publication of the famous Ebers Papyrus, which provided valuable material for the study of ancient medical texts. At the same time, he devoted himself to spreading Egyptological knowledge through literature, writing historical novels such as An Egyptian Princess and Uarda. These works weave the social life and historical settings of ancient Egypt into their narratives, making specialized scholarship more accessible to general readers. His works number 172 in the library's collection, including the serialized volumes of An Egyptian Princess and Cleopatra, which shows how widely his historical novels circulated. Overall, Ebers combined scholarly rigor with a novelist's gift for popular expression, occupying a distinctive place in the popularization of Egyptology in the nineteenth century.