Saturday, August 8, 2009

The story of San Michele by Axel Munthe

I received this book on last Christmas from my girlfriend, it gives a delectable experience, an interesting and engaging reading. The title of the book holds the name of San Michele Villa from the marvelous Italian Capri island, a villa which was build by the Swedish doctor Axel Munthe as his home. In the book Axel Munthe tells his own life story ,a remembrance of a life spent as a doctor of poor, of high society and that of an animal lover. We find him in Paris as a former assistant of Charcot at Salpetriere and as a popular and successful doctor with rich clientele, in his native Sweden in Lapland, in Naples in the time of cholera fighting the epidemic, in his beloved Anacapri of Capri island where he builds his villa from ancient ruins in the garden of Cesar Tiberius and were he writes his memories. In his garden found refuge his pets: his dogs and Billy the nasty monkey. His villa still remains on of the attractions of Anacapri. The cover is of the Hungarian edition titled San Michele regénye. The Story of San Michele at Amazon. If you are keen you can read online the The story of San Michele at Internet Archive.org. Other online books by Axel Munthe are available at Open Library.


Cover of Story of San Michele in Hungarian San Michele regénye


2 comments:

  1. Hello Erik!

    This is a very interesting book. I am reading it now, and before the day I found it at the bookstore had never heard of it or seen its title before. Looking for something interesting to read, I decided to read both the prefaces and found out that I had been very lucky to find it. It is a book that opens ones eyes, it even teaches one about life. My suggestion is to read it, specially for all those animal lovers and also to those interested in understanding in a more psychological sense the labor of medical doctors.

    Regards from Monterrey, Mexico

    Rodolfo Salinas(neworleanian@hotmail.com)

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  2. Hi Rodolfo! Thank you for your comment! Another good book on the life of a doctor is The citadel by A. J. Cronin. These are pretty old novels but times makes them better like the good wines. Another author I intend to comment on is B. Traven whose novels I read some years ago and I intend to reread some of them.
    Unfortunately old novels are reprinted less and less with the exceptions of some lucky ones, though it would be cheaper to print them.

    Erik

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