In August 1785 Paris buzzed with a scandal involving an eminent churchman, a female fraudster, a part-time prostitute and the unpopular Queen herself. At the heart of the scandal was the most
expensive diamond necklace ever assembled, and the tangle of fraud, folly, blindness and self-delusion it provoked. The humiliation inflicted on the royal family by this affair contributed to
their appalling deaths in the Revolution just four years later.
In this version of the story, Hungarian novelist Antal Szerb uses the narrative as a standpoint from which to survey the entire age - including aspects of it seldom considered by more orthodox
historians. The author's vast knowledge is worn very lightly, and the book teems with amusing anecdotes, but it is at heart a deeply personal work, and a remarkable gesture of defiance against
the brutal world in which it was written.
