The Charterhouse of Parma
Stendhal wrote his second masterpiece as a love letter to Italy and a critique of the petty politics that crush extraordinary people.
“The only real prison is the fear of love, and the only real freedom is to love without fear.”
Why It Matters
Stendhal wrote his second masterpiece as a love letter to Italy and a critique of the petty politics that crush extraordinary people. The Waterloo sequence — where Fabrice wanders through the battle confused and terrified — reinvented how fiction depicts war. Tolstoy directly credited it as the inspiration for the battle scenes in War and Peace.
The 
Take
Personal reviewSolid court intrigue plot with excellent character development. Language/writingn just was pretty plain, not sure if translation or original
Notable Quotes
“In love, unlike most other passions, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future.”