ABOUT THIS BOOK

A gripping historical novel that explores how the Fourth Crusade plundered Constantinople and forever changed the course of European history.

The year is 1204. Stripped of his power and held captive, Massimo Gasparino, once the most trusted aide to the Doge of Venice, pens a desperate secret letter to Pope Innocent III. His confession? He has witnessed the most egregious crime in human history: the deliberate diversion of the Fourth Crusade from Jerusalem to the heart of Christian Europe, Constantinople. As the city is ruthlessly plundered and its treasures shipped to Venice, Gasparino’s letter exposes the Doge’s shocking betrayal, a sin that irrevocably alters the course of history. But with his life and the fate of this explosive truth hanging precariously in the balance, can he get his message to Pope Innocent III before the Doge silences him forever?

The Valet is a tense, intimate drama of ambition, guilt, and the enduring shadows of a war that still resonates in today’s world.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Thorvald Steen is a major Norwegian author who has published a wide range of novels, plays, collections of poems and short stories, children’s books, and essays. His books include Lionheart, The Little Horse, The Invisible Library, and The White Bathing Hut, all also published by Seagull Books. Olivia Lasky is an Oslo-based translator who focuses on Norwegian to English literary translations. Her literary translations include work by Karl Ove Knausgård, Laila Stien, Sigbjørn Skåden, and Tor Åge Bringsværd.

REVIEWS

“The Little Horse shows just how much richness there is in dramatic irony. . . . Steen doesn’t abandon the ripe entertainment in a story of love, fatherhood, spies, betrayals, manipulation, revenge . . . It is a saga itself and Anderson’s translation accomplishes the difficult task of creating not just the descriptions of a historical time, but prose that has the stiffness of an older world, while still tumbling gently, never forgetting that Iceland is a land of beauty.”

— Three Percent, Praise for “The Little Horse”

“With the slightly stilted feel reminiscent of translations of the epics of those times, The Little Horse is a nice little work of historic fiction, plausibly entering into the mind of Snorre Sturlason during his final days, and creatively—and suspensefully—spinning out the final plot that led to his fatal downfall.”

— Complete Review, Praise for “The Little Horse”

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.The Valet
2.Sources
3.Acknowledgements