Mare Nostrum: A Novel

Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente, 1867-1928Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.8
Word count
896K words
Chapters
90

Tags

English Originals Foreign Literature Love EntanglementsHeroismHuman NatureScreen AdaptationExotic CultureCross-Cultural View

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.Mare Nostrum (Our Sea): A Novel by Vicente Blasco IbáñezAuthor: Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente, 1867-1928,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Mar 1, 2004

Editor's review

Blasco Ibáñez's Mare Nostrum is a novel set on the Mediterranean, weaving together seafaring adventure, love entanglements, and the currents of the age. The author is a major figure in Spanish realism, and the sea in his writing is both a concrete space of navigation and a symbol carrying fate and ambition. The novel moves at a brisk pace with broad scenes, as characters struggle between personal feeling and larger historical pressures, yielding a strong sense of vivid imagery and dramatic tension. For readers who enjoy maritime subjects, exotic settings, and classical storytelling, this work offers a solid reading experience. The English translation makes a Spanish literary classic accessible to Chinese readers. Readers might note how the author uses the sea as an image to link private and collective destinies, which is what lifts the book beyond an ordinary adventure story.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. First learn about the Spanish realist tradition the author belongs to; this makes it easier to grasp the tone.
  2. Read the sea scenes as a thread, noting how the sea recurs on both the plot and symbolic levels.
  3. Advance chapter by chapter in this long novel, reviewing changes in character relationships after each part.
  4. If reading the English translation, skip over nautical and place-name vocabulary at first to keep the reading rhythm.

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
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90

FAQ

What does the title mean? "Mare Nostrum" is Latin for "our sea," the ancient Roman name for the Mediterranean. The novel unfolds against the Mediterranean, and the title points both to a concrete geographical space and to the characters' sense of belonging to and contention over these waters; it is an important entry point for understanding the book's imagery.
Can I read this without having read the author's other works? Yes. This is a standalone novel and does not depend on prior reading of the author's other works. Still, knowing in advance that Ibáñez belongs to the Spanish realist tradition and that his works often focus on social and personal conflict can help readers enter his narrative tone and character logic more quickly.
Is this the English or Chinese edition? The provided information indicates an English ebook, a public-domain resource from Project Gutenberg. Chinese readers with limited English reading ability may need a Chinese translation or introductory materials. The English original is generally early twentieth-century narrative prose, with long sentences but clear plot progression.
Is the pace slow? The book is strongly plot-driven, with frequent scene changes and dramatic conflict; it is not a work dominated by static description. But as an early long novel, it still devotes considerable space to setup and character introduction. Advance chapter by chapter, and do not stop in the first few chapters because there are many characters; the pace picks up noticeably once the main plot begins.

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About the author

Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente, 1867-1928 Author

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1867–1928) was a Spanish novelist. Public information on the details of his life is limited, yet the character of his work is fairly clear. The library holds 46 of his works, including such representative titles as Sangre y arena, Cañas y barro, Los cuatro jinetes del apocalipsis, La Barraca, Flor de mayo and La bodega. His fiction often draws on rural Valencia and the lives of the urban poor, written in a realistic vein and skilled at portraying the natural landscape and its entanglement with human fate, combining regional colour with social criticism. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, set against war, brought him a wider international readership. Overall, his novels occupy a place in the transition of Spanish literature from realism to modern narrative.