From The Story

Foto: Peter de Ru

As a writer, Axel Munthe was both enthusiastic and moving, sometimes provocative, rather funny, even ironic.

Munte’s dream shows that ”The Story of San Michele” was by no means an autobiography, it is a literary work in the truest meaning of the word, a fiction created by Axel Munthe. The chapter about Super-homo is provocative. The headline was set almost 80 years ago, when sexual inversion was the expression used. In the chapter about the angry fellow physicians, Axel Munthe shows his best side.

His description of his arrogant and gloomy colleagues, those who travel around in “galoshes from the time of Pio Nono” (Pope Pius IX), is priceless. The contemporary diplomat and author Carl Bildt’s instructions for how Munthe should finance his creation San Michele are still valid. Read and learn. Birdsong over Anacapri, finally, is a reflection on life’s little pleasures, for those capable of appreciating them.

Cecilia Klynne