Apparently a Polish classic, dating from the dawn of the romantic movement but written by a sceptical nobleman who was also a world traveller, and intellectual all rounder in the 18th century tradition. It is really a story within a story, or rather, stories within a story within a story. The setting is Spain about 1739, and the narrator, an army officer, falls into strange company and hears strange, often macabre tales which he duly records. The book is partly picaresque in the manner of Gil Blas, partly a Gothic horror novel, and it also anticipates Goya's engravings and even Merimee's Carmen in its depiction of Spain. Though the storyline is often submerged by the stories themselves, the work is a fascinating by way of European literature.