Words leave imprints in your mind like footprints in the sand...
1860s: A book which looks at the honour and valour involved with fencing. Set against the background of a Madrid sweltering on the eve of Spain’s September Revolution in 1868. Each of its eight chapters begins with an epigraph to fencing which emerges as a way of interpreting the world.
In Madrid in 1868, fencing master Don Jaime is approached by a mysterious woman who wants him to teach her an arcane fencing technique only he knows.
It’s not quite as simple as that however as he finds himself mixed up in a plot that includes seduction, secret political documents and worse of all – murder.
The Fencing Master is a world of ideals of honor and chivalry.
”The pistol is not a weapon, it is an impertinence. If two men are to kill each other, they should do so face-to-face, not from a distance, like vile highwaymen”
Fighting and fencing are an art to Don Jaime and the world of fencing is the main setting here with the honour and the grace and determination that goes with it being the main thrust of the novel if you excuse the fencing pun.
In 19th century Madrid, Don Jaime’s position as a virtual outsider makes him a great pair of eyes through which to see the landscape and goings on of the city and people in it. He lives and breathes fencing and it is honor that keeps him going when everything around him is falling apart.
This is a story of bygone chivalry, of a man who still lives in that time . And the setting of 1868 really shines to highlight the differences between the truth and his ideal.
