{"product_id":"2026100008205-secondhand-the-great-fortune","title":"The Great Fortune","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003eCondition: Good. Jacket: Worn\/faded - no tears. Page Condition: Yellowed with signs of aging. Markings: No markings. Usual shelf-wear. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the precipice of the Second World War, a young English couple arrives in Bucharest, Romania — a city teeming with intrigue, exile, and the trembling uncertainty of a Europe on the brink of collapse. The Great Fortune is the first volume of Olivia Manning's celebrated Balkan Trilogy, chronicling the early marriage of Harriet and Guy Pringle as they navigate the cultural and political upheaval of wartime Romania. Guy, an irrepressible idealist teaching at the English institute, throws himself into amateur theatre and political causes, while Harriet quietly observes the fragile, brilliant world dissolving around them. Manning draws on her own wartime experiences to render Bucharest with extraordinary vividness — its cafés, its desperate expatriates, its doomed glamour — creating a portrait of a society luxuriating in what it does not yet know it is about to lose.\n\nRegarded as one of the finest British war novels of the twentieth century, The Great Fortune masterfully balances intimate domestic tension with sweeping historical drama. Manning's prose is precise, unsentimental, and deeply ironic, presenting characters who are flawed, fully human, and achingly real against the backdrop of impending catastrophe. Anthony Burgess famously described Manning's Balkan Trilogy as among the greatest fictional achievements of the era — a verdict that only grows more compelling with each passing decade. For readers who have yet to discover Harriet Pringle, the question is not whether Bucharest will fall, but whether love can endure when the world it was built upon crumbles beneath it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49130719871195,"sku":"2026100008205-SECONDHAND","price":25.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/178e6e5a-7586-43a9-b286-27ea5d0040a4.png?v=1786589234","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026100008205-secondhand-the-great-fortune","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}