The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse is a novel by the Spanish author Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. First published in 1916, it tells a tangled tale of the French and German sons-in-law of an Argentinian landowner who find themselves fighting on opposite sides during the First World War. Its 1918 English translation by Charlotte Brewster Jordan became the best-selling novel in the US in 1919 according to Publishers Weekly, which hailed it as "a superbly human story told by a genius." The novel was included in the list of 100 best novels of the 20th century by the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. Summary A Frenchman, Marcelo Desnoyers, travels to Argentina in 1870 and marries the elder daughter of Julio Madariaga, the owner of a ranch. Eventually, Marcelo; his wife; and his children, Julio and Chichi, move back to France and live in a mansion in Paris. Julio turns out to be a spoiled lazy young man who avoids commitments and flirts with a married woman, Marguerite Laurier. Meanwhile, Madariaga's younger daughter has married a German man, Karl Hartrott, and the Hartrotts move back to Germany. The Desnoyers family and the Hartrott family are thus set against each other with the onset of the First World War. However, Julio Desnoyers initially shows no interest in the war, but Hartrott's family eagerly supports the German cause. It is only after Julio's lover, Marguerite, lavishes attention upon her husband after the latter is wounded in battle that Julio is moved to participate in the war. While the young Julio serves as a soldier, the aging Marcelo leaves the shelter and returns to his mansion, where he watches the German soldiers advance and eventually plunder his belongings and eat his food. At last, the French soldiers push back the German soldiers, and Marcelo chooses to defend a German man who spared Marcelo's life.