Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78367 in Books
• Published on: 1977-04-28
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Synopsis
An epic story of lust, cruelty, and sensuality, this historical novel is set in Carthage in the days following the First Punic War with Rome.

Book Information
An epic story combining lust, cruelty, riches, ritual and sensuality, few French historical novels can stand comparison with Salammbo.

Immediately after the protracted and crippling First Punic War with Rome, the Carthaginian army under Hamilcar was obliged to contend with a revolt by its unpaid mercenaries--an anarchic barbarian horde of mixed race--led by the Libyan Matho. It is a story of the most appalling savagery which Flaubert was anxious to render in spirit and in detail. His invention of the exotic and chilling Salammbo, priestess in the temple of the Goddess Tanit, and her obsessive relationship with Matho, lends dramatic unity to a tale of epic grandeur in which Flaubert gave full rein to his love of the gorgeous, the voluptuous and the bizarre.

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Customer Reviews

Carthage
Although this book is called Salammbo, she doesn't appear in it that much, and her story is just an incidental sideline to the main story. If you have read Flaubert before you will find this book somewhat different. If you like a bog standard historical novel you may find this tale a bit too exotic.

Salammbo is set in the second century BC. Carthage won't pay its mercenaries after the Punic Wars, and thus starts the Mercenary War. What this book shows is the horrors of war, and man's inhumanity to man. Prisoners of war are crucified or trampled underfoot by elephants amongst other indignities. Carthage is under siege at one stage and the inhabitants practice human sacrifice to appease the gods. The mercenaries that see this look on in shocked dismay, only for some of them to later carry out cannibalism.

This book is bloody and gory, and the story will keep you absorbed. It would make an excellent movie, but once again it won't be a book for everyones tastes.