Hervey Allen · 1933 · global

Hervey Allen's sprawling Napoleonic-era epic follows Anthony Adverse, an illegitimate child raised in an Italian convent, from a Leghorn counting-house across four continents to Cuba, a slave station on the African coast, Napoleon's Paris, and on to New Orleans and the New Mexico frontier where his fortunes end.

1. 1
   Genoa

   Born of a doomed love affair and left at an Alpine convent near Genoa, the boy Anthony is raised by nuns and named for adversity itself.

2. 2
   Livorno

   Taken in by the Leghorn merchant John Bonnyfeather, secretly his grandfather, Anthony learns commerce, languages, and the wider world.

3. 3
   Havana

   His first great voyage carries him across the Atlantic to collect a debt from the slave-trader Gallego in Cuba.

4. 4
   Rio Pongo

   On the African coast he takes over a slave-trading station and, over three haunted years, grows rich on human misery.

5. 5
   Paris

   Returning to a Europe convulsed by revolution, he reaches Napoleon's Paris and a bold scheme to spirit Spanish gold out of Mexico.

6. 6
   New Orleans

   In New Orleans he builds a fortune as a merchant and planter, before fire and fate strip everything away.

7. 7
   Santa Fe

   He journeys into the New Mexico wilderness, then a remote Spanish frontier, and there among the missions his long adventure quietly ends.