Publisher's Synopsis
This novel by Vicente Ibanez follows the life of a Frenchman, Marcelo Desonyers, from his travelling youth until the chaotic maelstrom that was World War I. Published in 1916 as the horrific carnage of the First World War held much of Europe in its clutches, this novel is a family saga which begins decades earlier in 1870. Marcelo Desonyers makes the lengthy voyage to faraway Argentina, where he marries a young woman of the landowning Madariaga family. The bulk of the novel is focused upon the lives and fate of the family once they travel back to Europe and World War I nears. They are wealthy and live in an opulent district of Paris, but are disappointed by their younger son Julio who matures to become a philanderer who shirks his responsibilities. When the war arrives, the lives and fates of the Desonyers clan are impacted greatly, with the carnage wrought upon France detailed in all its grisly horror. Powerfully and demonstratively, Ibanez shows how war can assume the role of the titular 'Four Horsemen'; wreaking an apocalyptic fate upon those who suffer under it.
