Andrzej Sapkowski, "The Tower of Fools" (2002/2020)

 

Coincidentally I have just read another historical novel set in 15th-century Europe: Walter Scott’s Quentin Durward, a classic of world literature about which I wrote at, I confess, too great a length here. To turn from that to Andrzej Sapkowski’s (non-Witcher) novel The Tower of Fools (2002; translated into English by David French 2020) is to be struck by the things Sapkowski emphasises that Scott tends not to dwell-on. For example: naked ladies (‘Adèle was utterly, completely, totally naked’ [8]), amply-bosomed boatwomen (‘Reynevan did his best not to stare at her sturdy thighs, visible beneath her rolled-up skirt … her shirt clung to breasts worthy of Venus’ [84]) and sexy flame-haired witches (‘the woman was sitting with legs casually sprawled, allowing them an impressive eyeful of things normally kept covered’ [167])—not to mention sexy flame-haired lesbian witches (‘the witches were kissing passionately and voraciously … the one behind was utterly preoccupied with the breasts of the one in front, which she had pulled out of her unbuttoned blouse’ [429]). There’s also quite a bit more piss than is the case in Scott: ‘the urine matured for around two weeks in large vats’ [120]; ‘there were a great many horses, stamping their hooves in puddles of urine’ [515].

Sapkowski’s two slightly gormless but up-for-it young heroes, Reynevan and Scharley, gallop around Europe having various adventures, encountering all sorts of people, and meeting various freaks, devils, hamadryads and monsters. You can read a long way in Walter Scott without encountering a buggering werewolf (‘“as a human being it had perverted tendencies, which remains with it in wolfish form; it lies in wait for someone to drop their trousers and expose their privates—the wretch usually seizes its victim from behind, holds him fast … and then … you understand”’ [218; ellipses in original]). You will be relieved to know that this creature is dealt with promptly: ‘a punch on the nose made the werewolf howl’.

Every cliché of medieval-set historical fiction is supplied: people carouse in taverns, old hags cackle, brigands roar, sinister priests plot. ‘The black knight thundered at them with upraised sword and cloak flowing behind, so fast he was tossing up divots of turf’ [452]. The Hussite wars are raging, the Inquisition is torturing people—‘red hot irons, and the standard strappado and screws on the fingers and toes’ [231]—and there’s a lot of violence and death, all described with a kind of gurning, adolescent glee:

The ball struck Ekkehard of Sulz in the chin and tore off his head. A fountain of blood gushed from the neck of the advocate of the anti-Hussite crusade; his head slapped against the wall of the barn, rolled across the field, finally coming to rest in the grass, its dead eyes watching the dogs as they sniffed it. [290]

And let’s not forget the constant supply of ladies who are not only naked, but utterly, completely, totally naked (‘her small round breasts with nipples hard with desire, her slim waist, her shyly clenched thighs, full, beautiful’ [446]). Scott, it’s not.