description:  A Brief Romance makes a daring and astonishing leap into our cultural history. Its narrator imagines himself telling his dying father - a radical activitist he has not seen since childhood - the cautionary tale of another revolutionary, Jean Lambert Tallien who in 1791 prints inflammatory pamphlets urging the overthrow of the French King, and whose commitment and zeal earn him a place in the revolutionary leadership. Then he falls in love with a Spanish countess and, at the risk of his own neck, rescues her from the guillotine. The story of Tallien's revolutionary career is punctuated by the narrator's own memories of his childhood in the Bronx. Tuten illuminates the incompatibility of reality and desire with authority.
language: English
title: Tallien
titlecomplete: Tallien
ratings_count: 9
publisher: FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX. NY 1988