One night in the middle of the 1700s, Doctor Schützer wanders home through a wintry Stockholm. He is happy. He has amputated shot-off limbs, and delivered babies at court, but nothing compares to his night’s greatest achievement. He is looking forwar ...
One night in the middle of the 1700s, Doctor Schützer wanders home through a wintry Stockholm. He is happy. He has amputated shot-off limbs, and delivered babies at court, but nothing compares to his night’s greatest achievement. He is looking forward to telling his young wife about it.
Drottningens chirurg/The Queen's Surgeon is a novel about a man who was both ahead of and behind the times, about a new and uncertain friendship, about male vanity, desperate love, royal disfavour, and most of all, about that riddle the doctor calls woman. This is the first part of a family history that draws on aspects of her own history – in which Agneta Pleijel talks about power, gender and insatiable ambition.
Rights sold to:
Gyldendal, Denmark
Gyldendal, Norway
De Geus, the Netherlands
Humanitas, Romania
Press voices
"In Drottningens chirurg, Pleijel treads the same ground that P O Enquist returned to in novel after novel: the border area where science merges with superstition, sense with prejudice, where love collides with convention and high-flown theories and lands in a bloody reality. This is a charged little story about hunger for knowledge and longing for love, written in a terse and crystal clear prose. Lean yet throbbingly sensuous, the novel depicts an 18th century redolent with colours and smells." Ann Lingebrandt, Norrköpings tidningar
"Agneta Pleijel is a great storyteller with a clear, beautiful language." Gun Zanton-Ericsson, Östgöta Correspondenten
"Once again, Pleijel has demonstrated how adeptly, informatively and sensitively she can read into the flow of ideas, the climate and history of thought, and, quite rightly, sheds light on a cultural heritage that is little known outside of specialist circles." Eva Ström, Sydsvenska Dagbladet
”…an in many ways brilliant novel, borne up not least by the simple, refined imagery that is one of the hallmarks of Pleijel’s writing. /.../ No surgeon, nobody at all, can in the end explain the riddle that is man; the frail, vulnerable miracle that is his body. This could be the point of this profoundly thoughtful and often brilliant novel.” Mats Gellerfelt, SvD
”The main character in Agneta Pleijel’s new book is a court surgeon obsessed with female genitalia. Drottningens kirurg is Pleijel’s most accomplished novel. /.../ …a talented storyteller, one of the few really outstanding ones in Sweden, who seems to really enjoy fleshing out her stories with ever greater artistry.” Ulrika Kärnborg, DN