Paul Weidmann 4 hr 13 min read

Dedicated, with heavy irony, to a King of the Antipodes, this satire holds up the figure of the Conqueror who terrified cities and nations.

Paul Weidmann's 1786 German work ('The Conqueror'), framed as old chronicles with new annotations, is an Enlightenment-era satire on conquest and rulership. A period piece of eighteenth-century literary fantasy and political irony. Read it for a witty, pre-modern meditation on tyrants dressed in the trappings of ancient legend.

In its time

Published in 1786, during the Pre-1800, voyages to the moon, subterranean worlds, and philosophical utopias, the deep roots of the imaginative tradition, from kepler and cyrano to the enlightenment.

Reading it

4 hr 13 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).