The Story of San Michele

"I have to say I wouldn’t count The Story of San Michele as some great work of literature—I don’t think it is. It’s much more a digestible series of bite-size vignettes compared to the other novels. I would never put it in the same category as the others, but it’s just so quintessentially European—not least if you know anything about Axel Munthe himself. He was a Swedish doctor who was the personal doctor of the Swedish queen, and an animal lover, married to a Brit, who fell in love with this church when he first saw it, and came back later in life to buy it. In a sense, he’s almost an aristocratic figure but he also did a great deal for the poor and the diseased in Naples and in Paris. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter It’s a good book for anyone who wants to be reminded of how the patchwork of European languages and cultures can blend into each other and do so very beautifully. In many ways, it’s a reminder of some of the very best of what Europe can be."