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A carregar... The Red Dancer: The Life and Times of Mata Hari (2001)por Richard Skinner
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Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. "The Red Dancer deftly reconstructs the life of Mata Hari into an artful collage of historical documents and imaginative stories. The reader will learn a great deal about fin de siècle Europe and World War I, as well as the person of Mata Hari--who became a notorious double agent following a sensational career as an 'oriental' dancer. A good read, innovative, and compelling."---Marilyn Yalom, author of A History of the Wife So this is a fictitious account of the life of Mata Hari. I must confess I knew little about her before I read this book and so the gradual unfolding of events was a complete surprise to me and very enjoyable. The book is written from varying points of view (very rarely those of Mata Hari herself) and interspersed with factual information from the time and newspaper clippings of her reviews, which greatly add to the atmosphere of the book. The events of Mati Hari's life are thrilling - she certainly lived a full and licentious life - truly fascinating. As soon as I had finished the book, I was straight on google trying to glean further details about her and see how much of this novel was "true". For me, the main failing of this book was that I never, at any stage, understood more than her surface-level motivations. There is no real examination of her inner mind and hence she remains a total mystery. It's clear that this was Skinner's intention but it did leave me wanting more. sem críticas | adicionar uma crítica
The Red Dancer opens in 1895 when, as a young woman in Amsterdam, Margaretha Zelle answers a lonely-hearts advertisement placed by a soldier twice her age in a local newspaper. But her marriage to Captain McLeod of the Dutch army ends in tragedy and acrimony and she leaves their posting in Indonesia. Heading for Paris, she adopts the stage name Mata Hari - 'Eye of the Morning' - and reinvents herself as an exotic dancer. Mata Hari's fame soon spreads throughout the cabarets and theatres of Europe and, as the major powers lurch towards inevitable conflict, she begins to attract the attention of numerous admirers - many of whom are officers, all too keen to share their secrets with a woman of notorious intrigue and allure. Set against the dramatically imagined backdrop of pre-War Europe, Richard Skinner's novel weaves interlinking chapters of fiction and non-fiction to conjure up the life, loves and tragic end of a woman who continues to fascinate almost a century on from her death. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — A carregar... GénerosSistema Decimal de Melvil (DDC)823.92Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 2000-Classificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos EUA (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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In 1895, Margaretha Zelle, a destitute young woman from The Hague, answers a personal ad placed by a Dutch army captain twice her age seeking a wife. After a speedy marriage, she departs with him for a posting in Indonesia. Marred by violence, infidelity, bitter feuding, and their son's disturbing death, the marriage collapses. Returning to Europe, Margaretha travels to Paris, where, inspired by the exotic enchantment of Eastern dance, she reinvents herself as the erotic dancer Mata Hari ("Eye of the Dawn"), the likes of which the Continent has never seen. Just as the major European powers lurch toward explosive conflict, Mata Hari's reputation as a dancer and courtesan starts to attract the attention of powerful admirers from Madrid to Vienna, from Berlin to St. Petersburg. Entrapped, Mata Hari is drawn into a military intrigue that will affect the course of World War I.
Narrated by historical figures whose lives intersected with Mata Hari's -- from her husband to her executioner -- The Red Dancer explores the mystery and downfall of a woman at the center of a notorious espionage scandal that has inspired historians and artists for generations. Ranging from exotic Indonesia to the seedy dance halls of Paris, it brilliantly depicts the delicious and eerie decadence of fin de sicle Europe and the onset of a global conflict that ended an era.