James Branch Cabell 4 hr 48 min read

With the great Redeemer Manuel gone, his nine legendary companions scatter across a changing world, and the myth of his glory grows ever larger than the man they knew.

James Branch Cabell's 1926 novel is a witty, ironic fantasy of legend and disillusion. Elegant, sly, superbly told. Read it for a jewel of the Biography of Manuel, a beautiful, mordant meditation on how heroes become myths, set in Cabell's enchanted medieval land of Poictesme.

In its time

Published in 1926, during the 1920s, the pulp era proper.

Reading it

4 hr 48 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).