Louis Couperus 2 hr 58 min read

Deliberately old-fashioned, the author steals his plot from Apuleius' Golden Ass and writes an unabashedly antique tale of a man turned donkey.

Louis Couperus's 1918 Dutch novel ('The Enamoured Ass') is a witty, decadent reworking of the ancient Roman tale of transformation, written in playful reaction against modern literary fashions. Elegant, ironic literary fantasy from a Dutch master. Read it for a sophisticated antique adventure, magic and metamorphosis in a knowing modern key.

In its time

Published in 1918, during the 1910s, lost worlds and interplanetary adventure.

Reading it

2 hr 58 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).