The Prince of India - Lewis Wallace

I have recently been reading (or listening to, on my Kindle) Lewis Wallace's The Prince of India: Or Why Constantinople Fell (1893).  As it is far beyond it's copyright date, I got it free sometime back.  It attracted me since it talks of both India and Constantinople, both topics of interest to me.  It has far exceeded my expectations of an old novel!

  

I rarely read classic works, particularly those that are unknown to me: they tend towards the tedious too often; and if they have not achieved recognition already, why would they now?  Still, with many hours of driving time in which to listen to it, I figured I would at least start it, and now I am thoroughly hooked.  It is masterfully told.  Some may have recognized the author as he who wrote the perennial best-seller, Ben-Hur.  To my mind, this work easily overshadows the other, thought doubtless my lack of having read that in the author's original makes my comparison unjust.

While in most classic works, the flowing and descriptive works may begin to wear on one's patience, here it enhances the subject.  The East and its ascendant warriors encounter the royalty of the Byzantines in their courts. The effect is to build a plot more slowly than the modern novel is often built, but the very weightiness of the topic, even in a novel, allows for this care in detail.  Doubtless, I am biased towards the author's weaving in numerous places that I have grown to love and expect to see again.  Still, I would gladly recommend the book to anyone who loves to have characters, cultures and history unfolded for them in graceful fiction.  

Not to minimize an ancient urging, Tolle Lege!