Publisher's Synopsis
Synopsis:
The Bottle Imp is a fantastic tale by Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, written in 1891, and published that same year in the short story anthology Island Nights' Entertainments. The novel reflects two interesting aspects in Robert Stevenson: his enormous capacity for observation, detail that encompasses his descriptions and nuances of Hawaii (or the Kingdom of Hawaii, as it was in his time), and the sensitivity to unite his narrative, his topics essential, with other classic variants. The devil in the bottle travels through that literature that tells us about pacts with the devil. The first example that comes to mind is the beloved Faust, but also The Devil and Tom Walker, by Washington Irving, or The Devil and Daniel Webster, by Stephen Benét. What differentiates Robert Stevenson's novel from others is, above all, the refined style of his narrative; an elegance that stands out without ever falling into arrogance, a typically baroque trait that the Scotsman never wielded. The plot of The Devil in the Bottle revolves around Keawe, a native of Hawaii, who acquires a strange bottle from an even more strange gentleman, with the promise that the being that inhabits it will fulfill all his wishes. The catch, if the term fits, is that the bottle must in turn be sold for a lower price than originally paid. Otherwise it will return again and again to its owner. Over the course of the novel, poor Keawe will bitterly discover how difficult it is to sell a demon in a bottle. The plot of The Devil in the Bottle revolves around Keawe, a native of Hawaii, who acquires a strange bottle from an even more strange gentleman, with the promise that the being that inhabits it will fulfill all his wishes. The catch, if the term fits, is that the bottle must in turn be sold for a lower price than originally paid. Otherwise it will return again and again to its owner. Over the course of the novel, poor Keawe will bitterly discover how difficult it is to sell a demon in a bottle. The plot of The Devil in the Bottle revolves around Keawe, a native of Hawaii, who acquires a strange bottle from an even more strange gentleman, with the promise that the being that inhabits it will fulfill all his wishes. The catch, if the term fits, is that the bottle must in turn be sold for a lower price than originally paid. Otherwise it will return again and again to its owner. Over the course of the novel, poor Keawe will bitterly discover how difficult it is to sell a demon in a bottle. is that the bottle must in turn be sold for a lower price than originally paid. Otherwise it will return again and again to its owner. Over the course of the novel, poor Keawe will bitterly discover how difficult it is to sell a demon in a bottle. is that the bottle must in turn be sold for a lower price than originally paid. Otherwise it will return again and again to its owner. Over the course of the novel, poor Keawe will bitterly discover how difficult it is to sell a demon in a bottle.
