شاید یک رویا باشد

by Barbara Cartland, باربارا کارتلند

Wienerkongressen danser… Og på sit allerførste maskebal hvirvles unge Wanda Schönborn ud på dansegulvet i armene på selveste Kejser Alexander af Rusland. Det bliver en dårende dejlig og helt igennem fortryllet vals for dem begge og kærlighed ved første øjekast. Blot har valsen en baggrund, som ingen af parterne har mistanke om. For Wanda har af Fyrst von Metternich fået til opgave at udspionere hans besværligste modstander, den russiske kejser, og netop denne aften har zaren ønsket at optræde inkognito og har overtalt sin ven, Richard Melton, til at trække i kejserens klæder. Og dermed er spillet gående... Det spændende, farlige spil mellem Europas statsoverhoveder.

Barbara Cartland (1901-2000) var en engelsk forfatter til romantiske romaner, der er blevet solgt i adskillige millioner eksemplarer. Cartland udgav sin første roman i 1922 og har skrevet i alt 723 bøger, der er blevet oversat til 36 forskellige sprog. På grund af sin effektivitet i sin forfattergerning, er hun nævnt i Guinness rekordbog for flest udgivne bøger i løbet af et enkelt år. Barbara Cartland blev i 1991 hædret af dronning Elizabeth II som Dame Commander of the order of the British Empire til ære for Cartlands sociale og politiske bidrag, foruden sit forfattervirke, i næsten 70 år.

Genres: Romance, Historical Romance, Historical Fiction, Fiction

230 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2009

About the author

Born in 1901, Barbara Cartland started her writing career in journalism and completed her first book, Jigsaw, when she was just 24. An immediate success, it was the start of her journey to becoming the world’s most famous and most read romantic novelist of all time. Inspiring a whole generation of readers around the globe with her exciting tales of adventure, love and intrigue, she became synonymous with the Romance genre. And she still is to this day, having written over 644 romantic fiction books.
As well as romantic novels, she wrote historical biographies, 6 autobiographies, plays, music, poetry and several advice books on life, love, health and cookery – totalling an incredible 723 books in all, with over 1 billion in sales.
Awarded the DBE by Queen Elizabeth II in 1991 in honour of her literary, political and social contributions, she was President of the Hertfordshire branch of the Royal College of Midwives as well as a Dame of Grace of the Order of St John of Jerusalem and Deputy President of the St John Ambulance Brigade.
Always a passionate advocate of woman’s health and beauty, she was dubbed ‘the true Queen of Romance’ by Vogue magazine in her lifetime. Her legend continues today through her wonderfully vivid romantic tales, stories that help you escape from the day to day into the dramatic adventures of strong, beautiful women who battle, often against the odds, eventually to find that love conquers all.
Find out more about the incredible life and works of Dame Barbara Cartland at www.barbaracartland.com

Reviews

[Tasneem]

She is of course the Queen of Romance and she did write these stories ages ago. But her Wanda is such a ninny most of the time. So frail, so stupid. Were women really supposed to be that idiotic in those times? I want to slap her for being so gullible, so innocent. She comes to the most glamorous and sophisticated centre of affairs and just seems to go about like its not teaching her anything. And then, after pretending that she had no idea that the Prince is her father, she suddenly seems to get it and demand his blessings. Rubbish really. I skipped loads because some of it was just tripe.

[Ria]

Wow, this guy worked his way through some women!
The story revolves around Clement Metternich, chancellor of the Austro Hungarian empire and his love affairs.
He married three times and had countless liaisons with any lady who caught his eye even whilst married!
His longest suffering wife Eleonore knew from the start about his conquests but loved him to the end of her days and plotted and intrigued alongside him hoping to elevate him to an exalted position and fruitlessly wishing to earn his love.
A telling portrait of what I can see a very selfish man who use women and discarded them while climbing the ladder to the top of his game.
Fascinating and though fictionalised into a story it has a lot of key events and major names of the day.

[Angeles]

Reading these very old romances makes me giggle. They are overly innocent, overly sweet. The main female characters more often than not make me want to shake them and yell "get a grip!" But they are sweet and quick reads, and I don't have to worry about little eyes when reading them

[Karen-Leigh]

Prince Metternich of Austria is growing weary of the political machinations of the European nations arguing over the spoils of Napoleon’s Empire, especially those of the duplicitous Czar of all the Russias, Alexander I. They are all gathered for the Congress of Vienna in 1815
Presented with an exquisitely beautiful young girl with eyes as piercingly blue as his own Prince Metternich is powerfully reminded of a siren he once loved in his past and accepts Wanda as his Ward.
But he has an ulterior motive – he persuades the naïve Wanda to go undercover in the Court of the Czar to glean information on his real intentions for Europe.
Meanwhile the Czar has his own suspicions of Metternich and arranges for his English friend Richard Melton to take his place, as they have similar physical characteristics.
Richard Melton is an exile from his home in England because he has been accused of duelling and, although he is innocent, no one believes him.
So begins a tortuous tangle of deceit, secrets and subterfuge in which Wanda quickly loses her heart to the man she takes to be the Czar.
But just as the truth eventually comes to light and love for Wanda stirs Richard Melton’s heart, his beloved is betrayed and is carried away forcibly in a sleigh bound for the clutches of the wicked Count Araktcheef in Russia – a fate Richard cannot bear to contemplate –

[Nadia]

Dame Barbara Cartland era brava nel suo genere! Forse questo non è uno dei suoi lavori migliori, ma la classe non è acqua.
L'inizio ingarbugliato (non amo particolarmente le spy stories, anche se qui l'elemento spionaggio è molto leggero) mi aveva quasi fatto desistere dal proseguire la lettura, ma il plot twist posizionato ad arte mi ha fatto cambiare idea e marcia: terminato in due pomeriggi.
Lo stile è fluido e punta molto sul romanticismo, come è giusto che sia. Forse è tutto un po' troppo "instant", ma lo considero un punto a favore perché intrattiene piacevolmente.
3 stelle e 1/2

[OrvokkiR]

Hero is a typical Cartland sleaze, a toffee-nosed misogynist whoring around and behaving callously, with a whiff of a school bully and semi-pedophiliac thing to "child-like" look of heroine. Yuck. But the romantic opulence of setting, as always with Cartland, is a real star: pseudo-historical fairytale to leave Disney behind.

[Kerry]

This was the first Barbara Cartland book I did not enjoy reading. I finally got through it, but if I hadn’t loved the hundreds of her other stories, I would have given up. Sometimes they do take a while to capture my interest, but this one I only liked the last chapter.

[ClaudiaR]

Há uma diferença entre ser ingénua e ser idiota, mas a BC parece não saber onde essa diferença se situa...

[Johanna Juntunen]

Tykkäsin, oli herttainen :)

[Karen-Leigh]

The Girl and the Monarch
The young Comtesse Wanda was lovely and innocent. She had come to Vienna to have fun, to go to balls, to meet eligible young men.
But the first man she met was the handsome Prince de Metternich, the greatest statesman of his time. The prince asked Wanda to do an extraordinary thing - he asked her to work for her country, to spy on Europe's most ruthless and powerfull monarch.
At first Wanda was glad to do something for her country, for the world! Then she met the man she was to betray, and before she knew it the worst of all possible things happened - they fell hopelessly in love...

[Mashi]

I like exciting books!Barbara Cartland has got a lot of exciting books better than this one.
This one is nice but not more than her other novels...

[Mahsa]

واقعا تو دنياى امروز ما اتفاقات اين كتاب يك روياست