The Lovers
by Morris West
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Four decades after their passionate and forbidden love affair, Bryan receives an urgent summons from Giulia, descendant of the ancient house of the Farnese di Mongrifone. The couple is plunged into a maelstrom of intrigue and danger, uncovering a closely guarded secret.Tags
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Reread after 10 years. Good character development and interesting desscriptions of political relationships following the 2nd WW as well as Italian attitudes to religion, family and women.
Bryan Cavanaugh, former Australian navy man and lawyer, works on a wealthy man's yacht in the early 1950s, assigned to protect the man's Italian wife, a descendant of nobility, and they begin an affair, separate, and meet again 40 years later.
****
Publishers Weekly Review: A fable of star-crossed lovers, this smoothly written tale by master novelist West ( The Shoes of the Fisherman ) begins in the years just after WW II. Bryan de Courcy Cavanagh, a young Irish-Australian, is hired to crew aboard a yacht owned by rich American Lou Molloy, who has planned a pleasure cruise with his fiancee Principessa Giulia Farnese. The marriage will be one of convenience, arranged by the Farnese family, whose lineage was established before the show more Renaissance, by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and by Molloy, to facilitate new alliances in the political maneuverings of the Cold War era. Cavanagh and Giulia fall passionately in love, aware that each of the stolen minutes they share aboard the yacht brings them closer to the inevitable decision to part. Four decades later, Cavanagh is reunited with Giulia and learns the secret she has kept for all those years. While the plot is predictable, West spins his narrative as a glowing thread of love lost and regained, woven through a rich tapestry of intrigue, betrayal, suspense and murder. show less
****
Publishers Weekly Review: A fable of star-crossed lovers, this smoothly written tale by master novelist West ( The Shoes of the Fisherman ) begins in the years just after WW II. Bryan de Courcy Cavanagh, a young Irish-Australian, is hired to crew aboard a yacht owned by rich American Lou Molloy, who has planned a pleasure cruise with his fiancee Principessa Giulia Farnese. The marriage will be one of convenience, arranged by the Farnese family, whose lineage was established before the show more Renaissance, by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and by Molloy, to facilitate new alliances in the political maneuverings of the Cold War era. Cavanagh and Giulia fall passionately in love, aware that each of the stolen minutes they share aboard the yacht brings them closer to the inevitable decision to part. Four decades later, Cavanagh is reunited with Giulia and learns the secret she has kept for all those years. While the plot is predictable, West spins his narrative as a glowing thread of love lost and regained, woven through a rich tapestry of intrigue, betrayal, suspense and murder. show less
Bryan Cavanagh heeft als marineofficier in WO II gediend, heeft daarna rechten gestudeerd en komt dan vanuit Australië naar Europa. Hij loopt de Amerikaan van Ierse afkomst Molloy tegen het lijf, die hem in dienst neemt als tweede man op zijn plezierjacht. Daarmee maakt Molloy een cruise door de Middellandse Zee, met aan boord zijn verloofde Giulia Farnese, haar vader en haar tante. Intussen worden er allerlei financiële deals gemaakt, waarbij ook het Vaticaan, via de familie Farnese, betrokken is. Uiteindelijk gaat het op een soort re-enactment van oude Vaticaanse intriges lijken.
Nov 24, 2025Dutch
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62+ Works 7,753 Members
Morris West was born in 1916 in St Kilda, Melbourne. At the age of thirteen, he left home to study with the Christian Brothers Order in Sydney, but left in 1939 after 12 years, before taking his final vows. He was fluent in Italian and French, and taught modern languages and mathematics in New South Wales and Tasmania in his twenties. He spent show more four years code-breaking as a cipher officer in the AIF, and then for a decade he concentrated on producing and writing radio plays. West's first novel was published in 1945 and he began writing full time in the 1950s. He went to Italy were he went undercover with Father Mario Borelli, who was working with street urchins, and wrote The Children of the Sun, published in 1957. In 1959, following six months as Vatican correspondent for The Daily Mail, he published The Devil's Advocate, which won the William Heinemann Award of the Royal Society, the National Brotherhood Award of the National Council of Christians and Jews as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Award. Shoes of a Fisherman, the first of The Papal Series, which included The Clowns of God, Lazarus and Eminence, won the Best-Sellers Paperback of the Year Award in 1965. West helped to found the Australian Society of Authors, was chairman of the National Book Council, chairman of the National Library of Australia and a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science. He was made member of the order of Australia (MBE) in 1985 and officer of the order of Australia (AO) in 1997. Apart from writing novels, West also wrote screenplays, radio dramas, plays and was also an artist. Translated into twenty-seven languages, his works have sold more that sixty million copies. He also wrote an account on his spiritual journey, A View From the Ridge, published at the end of 1996. Morris West died while working at his desk on 9th October 1999. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Work Relationships
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1993
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- Members
- 157
- Popularity
- 209,481
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (3.43)
- Languages
- 6 — English, French, Italian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Portuguese, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 26
- ASINs
- 2
