The Moonstone

A Victorian Detective Mystery of a Stolen Indian Diamond, Family Secrets, Opium, and Colonial Suspense

von Wilkie Collins

304 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1868) is a masterwork of Victorian sensation fiction and widely regarded as a foundational detective novel. Centered on the theft of a sacred Indian diamond from an English country house, the narrative unfolds through multiple testimonies, diaries, and documents, creating a sophisticated structure of partial knowledge, suspicion, and delayed revelation. Its style combines melodramatic intrigue with psychological acuity, legal precision, and social satire, while its imperial backstory exposes the anxieties of a Britain enriched and haunted by colonial possession. Collins, a close friend and collaborator of Charles Dickens, brought to fiction a fascination with law, medicine, domestic secrecy, and unconventional lives. His own experience of chronic illness and dependence on laudanum informs the novel's memorable treatment of altered consciousness and unreliable perception. A writer drawn to the hidden fractures beneath respectable Victorian society, Collins used popular forms to examine property, gender, class, and empire with unusual boldness. The Moonstone is highly recommended to readers interested in mystery fiction's origins, Victorian culture, or formally inventive storytelling. It remains both an absorbing puzzle and a subtle critique of the world that produces it.

• Themen: Belletristik Kriminalromane und Mystery
• ISBN: 9788028374266
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 15.05.2024
• Größe: 229 x 152 mm
• Verlag: Sharp Ink