Quo Vadis discussion

A sheer masterpiece...

A great book and the polish version of the mouvie respects the book almost entirly

There were passages in this book--particularly the Petronius sections--that totally wowed me. I didn't know there was a Polish film, but I will look it up now. I read the Jeremy Curtain translations of this and With Fire and Sword, which are quite old and I've heard that they were translated from the Russian version rather than the Polish. I would be interested in reading a different English translation if anyone knows of a better one. ???

Longhare wrote: "There were passages in this book--particularly the Petronius sections--that totally wowed me. I didn't know there was a Polish film, but I will look it up now. I read the Jeremy Curtain translation..."

Read anything out of Sienkiewicz's works translated by W.S.Kuniczak. Start again With fire and sword, then The Deluge and Fire in the Steppe (the trilogy)

Found it. (And the film version too--guess what my mother-in-law is getting for her birthday.) Rereading those opening pages had me locked in all over again. But then the free sample ran out. Rrrr. I hate to order from Amazon, but it seems to be out of print, and the other sites are pricing it very high.

I will also have to read Taras Bulba (Gogol), which I understand is the flip side--the Ukrainian version of the same conflict. Another one for my Gap List.

Back to Quo Vadis?, there were a number of other popular novels with biblical settings--Ben Hur, The Robe--(fodder for the Bible movie mania of the late '40s-50s), which are still widely read. That may explain why Quo Vadis? found a large audience in the U.S. while his other--arguably more important--novels never did.