Spangle: The Grand Promenade

by Gary Jennings Book 3 in the Spangle series.

First published 1999

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4.2(15)

The Florilegium continues east and north through Hungary and Russia before turning towards the most prestigious stages of western Europe. In St Petersburg, Zachary Edge and the company perform within the world of Alexander II, where imperial ceremony exists beside reform, police power and political unrest. Success makes the circus larger and more difficult to control, and the performers’ private lives increasingly threaten the unity on which the enterprise depends.

Paris under Napoleon III appears to offer the culmination of the troupe’s rise, but the Franco-Prussian War destroys the security of the capital. Defeat at Sedan, the fall of the Second Empire, the siege of Paris and the upheaval of the Commune surround the final performances. The trilogy closes by placing the fragile artificial world of the circus inside a city where spectacle, hunger, bombardment and revolution can no longer be kept apart.