Why a Booktrail?
1770s, 1990s: The setting is Russia and Stockholm – the story is the the Diderot project or the creation of the world’s first Encyclopedia
To the Hermitage
What you need to know before your trail
In October 1993, a novelist is invited to go to Stockholm and Russia to take part in what is referred to as the Diderot Project.
This project is the project of a man – a writer during the period of Enlightenment Denis Diderot-the son of a knife maker in Langres, who ended up compiling the Encyclopedia – a book that changed the world.
In Stockholm he is joined by various other members of the project-including an academic, a lustful opera singer, and a Swedish diplomat. This is the story not only of a significant book but the great thinkers who made it all possible.
Travel Guide
In alternating narratives, Bradbury brilliantly recreates the climate of the eighteenth century-as Diderot journeys to Russia at the behest of Catherine the Great for discussions on the nature of the late-18th-century world-as well as the twentieth century academic milieu.
In the preface, Bradbury explains that there really was a “Diderot Project,” hosted by colleagues at the Royal University of Stockholm, and he attended their meeting in October 1993
The narrator of the novel also goes in search of the Descartes, the French philosophers grave as he did die here on 11 February 1650 in while a guest at the house of the French ambassador.
They were in fact interred in the Adolf Fredriks Church in Holländargatan 14, Normalm part of the city but were later taken back to France.
There are places mentioned in the story such as Helsinki and Moscow but we concentrate on the main two here since they provide such rich pickings.
Where Next?
