Quo Vadis

Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916) won the 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature. A brilliant Polish writer and patriot, he is possibly best known abroad for his monumental historical epic Quo Vadis that portrays the vibrant and dissonant combination of cruel excesses and decadence of Rome during the reign of the corrupt Emperor Nero and the high faith of the emerging era of early Christianity.
Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero, is a love story of Marcus Vinicius, a passionate young Roman tribune, and Lygia Callina, a beautiful and gentle Christian maiden of royal Lygian descent and a hostage of Rome, raised in a patrician home. At first Marcus, a typical aristocratic Roman libertine of his time, has no notion of love and merely desires Lygia with erotic animalistic intensity. Through political machinations of the elegant Petronius he contrives to have her taken by force from her foster home and into the decadent and terrible splendor of the court of Ceasar, setting in motion a course of events that culminate in his own spiritual redemption.
Intricately researched, populated with vibrant historical figures, and gorgeous period detail, bloody spectacle and intimate beauty, this is an epic tapestry of the triumph of love, faith and sacrifice.

Henryk Adam Aleksander Pius Sienkiewicz (1846 - 1916) was a Polish journalist, novelist and the Nobel Prize laureate. He is best remembered for his historical novels, especially for his internationally known best-seller Quo Vadis (1896). Born into an impoverished Polish noble family in Russian-ruled Congress Poland, in the late 1860s Sienkiewicz began publishing journalistic and literary pieces. In the late 1870s he traveled to the United States, sending back travel essays that won him popularity with Polish readers. In the 1880s he began serializing novels that further increased his popularity. He soon became one of the most popular Polish writers at the turn of the 20th century and numerous translations gained him international renown, culminating in his receipt of the 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "outstanding merits as an epic writer."