Rękopis znaleziony w Saragossie

A young Spanish officer rides through the mountains of Andalusia, seeking his inheritance, and finds instead an infinite regress of stories. Alphonse van Worden expects a straightforward journey to claim his uncle's estate, but the road to Saragossa is populated by outlaws, Moorish princesses in hiding, a hermit who may be a murderer, and a Gypsy king with an uncanny command of Arabic. Each character assaults him with tales stranger and more compelling than the last, until Alphonse himself cannot distinguish the true from the invented. Written over eleven years by the Polish nobleman Jan Potocki, this labyrinthine masterpiece embeds sixty-six stories within its frame, each tale spawning another like a fever dream generating more fever dreams. The novel anticipates modernism by a century, using nested narration not merely as a structural flourish but as a meditation on how truth dissolves when everyone becomes a storyteller. It is a gothic adventure, a philosophical puzzle, and a picaresque romp through a Spain still bleeding from the Reconquista, where every encounter might be a test, a trap, or a revelation.