Book description
A fair-haired young man from Virginia sees a dark girl rowing on the
lake at Versailles and he falls in love. She turns out to be the
Duchess de La Rochefoucauld, known as Rosalie, married to a man twice
her age who also happens to be her uncle. It is the spring of 1875 and
the young American, William Short, nicknamed Wm, has crossed the
Atlantic to serve as secretary to his adoptive father Thomas Jefferson
at the Paris embassy. Lodging on the Champs Elysees with Jefferson's
two young daughters and their teenage slave Sally Hemings, Wm becomes
the darling of the free spirits of the ancien regime, who want
to copy everything American, including revolution and the pursuit of happiness.
But this is a time when nothing runs straight, certainly not the
pursuit of happiness. Together and apart, Wm and Rosalie endure the
bloodiest days of the Terror when everyone loses their heads or their
illusions except for one man, but that man is about to become
President of the United States.
Stylish, intelligent and witty, The Condor's Head is
by turns tense and erotic, incredibly funny and unbearably sad. It
includes the real-life letters of Wm and Rosalie and Jefferson, some
never published before. It also incidentally reveals the truth about
the Third President and Sally Hemings.
Ferdinand Mount was editor of the
Times Literary Supplement
from 1991 to 2002. He is the author of a number of highly praised
novels; his historical fiction includes
Jem and Sam
and
Umbrella.
He won the Hawthornden Prize in 1992. A columnist and political
journalist, he also writes hard-hitting non fiction. He lives in London
.
