Carmen

First published in 1845, this novella is framed as a scholar's researches in Spain. In Cordoba he meets the Navarrese soldier Don Jose, who then tells how he was ruined by Carmen, a Romani woman who works among the cigar factory, the smugglers, and the bullring. Jose deserts, kills, and follows her through Andalusia as she refuses to belong to one man. The narrative is short and hard: a confession of passion and honour killing, not an opera's sequence of set pieces. The tale is a crime and travel story in which ethnographic notes on the Roma sit beside Jose's account.

Bound in full cream cloth with a design in red by Kenneth Hobson. Transparent plastic dust-jacket printed in green.