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image of person or book cover 2641900321631573938.jpg
Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon Fortune single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Fortune
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'In 1806 Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Prussia. Beginning on the very day he leads his triumphant Grande Armee into Berlin through the Brandenburg Gate. Fortune traces the fates of a handful of souls whose lives briefly touch on that momentous day and then diverge across the globe.

'Spanning more than a century, the novel moves from the Napoleonic Wars to South America, and from the early penal settlement of Van Diemen's Land to the cannons of the First World War, mapping the reverberations of history on ordinary people. Some lives are willed into action and others are merely endured, but all are subject to the unpredictable whims of chance. Fortune is a historical novel like no other, a perfect jewel of epic and intense brilliance.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Notes

  • Dedication: For Luka, boy wonder
  • Epigraph: ...but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. -Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Crows Nest, North Sydney - Lane Cove area, Sydney Northern Suburbs, Sydney, New South Wales,: Allen and Unwin , 2019 .
      image of person or book cover 2641900321631573938.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 304p.
      Note/s:

      • Published July 2019.

      ISBN: 9781760529307
VIEW PUBLICATION DETAILS FOR ALL VERSIONS ()

Works about this Work

Certain Uncertainties Stephen Romei , 2019 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 29 June 2019; (p. 19)

'Lenny Bartulin hopes his latest novel, which spans the globe over a century, will draw people together, as he tells Stephen Romei.'
Ordinary Brutality of Life Louise Swinn , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 3 August 2019; (p. 22)
— Review of Fortune Lenny Bartulin , 2019 single work novel ; Snake Island Ben Hobson , 2019 single work novel ; Mother of Pearl Angela Savage , 2019 single work novel

'When Elisabeth and Johannes catch a glimpse of each other through a window at the start of Lenny Bartulin’s Fortune, it’s as if they already know one another. As the novel progresses we follow the separate journeys of these two characters, along with a cast of others, wondering if their paths will cross again.' (Introduction)
Fate Francesca Sasnaitis , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 415 2019; (p. 52)
— Review of Fortune Lenny Bartulin , 2019 single work novel

'Fortune begins with Napoleon’s triumphant entry into Berlin on 27 October 1806. Does it matter whether the popular image of the emperor astride a magnificent white stallion is an embellishment? ‘Time sullies every truth,’ Lenny Bartulin tells us. History is as much a fiction as this tale of derring-do and dire misfortune heaped on innocent and wicked alike. Coincidence, improbable and highly amusing, propels the narrative in a series of fast-moving, often farcical vignettes that recall Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532), Voltaire’s Candide (1759), and Joseph Furphy’s classic Australian yarn Such Is Life (1903).'(Introduction)
Fate Francesca Sasnaitis , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 415 2019; (p. 52)
— Review of Fortune Lenny Bartulin , 2019 single work novel

'Fortune begins with Napoleon’s triumphant entry into Berlin on 27 October 1806. Does it matter whether the popular image of the emperor astride a magnificent white stallion is an embellishment? ‘Time sullies every truth,’ Lenny Bartulin tells us. History is as much a fiction as this tale of derring-do and dire misfortune heaped on innocent and wicked alike. Coincidence, improbable and highly amusing, propels the narrative in a series of fast-moving, often farcical vignettes that recall Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532), Voltaire’s Candide (1759), and Joseph Furphy’s classic Australian yarn Such Is Life (1903).'(Introduction)
Ordinary Brutality of Life Louise Swinn , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 3 August 2019; (p. 22)
— Review of Fortune Lenny Bartulin , 2019 single work novel ; Snake Island Ben Hobson , 2019 single work novel ; Mother of Pearl Angela Savage , 2019 single work novel

'When Elisabeth and Johannes catch a glimpse of each other through a window at the start of Lenny Bartulin’s Fortune, it’s as if they already know one another. As the novel progresses we follow the separate journeys of these two characters, along with a cast of others, wondering if their paths will cross again.' (Introduction)
Certain Uncertainties Stephen Romei , 2019 single work column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 29 June 2019; (p. 19)

'Lenny Bartulin hopes his latest novel, which spans the globe over a century, will draw people together, as he tells Stephen Romei.'
VIEW ALL WORKS ABOUT (3)

Awards

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Last amended 22 Jul 2019 10:33:21
Subjects:
Settings:
  • Berlin,
    c
    Germany,
    c
    Western Europe, Europe,
  • Van Diemen's Land (1803-1856), Tasmania,
  • South America, Americas,
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