Predvojeni vikont

Set in Bohemia and Italy, more precisely in Liguria between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, at the time of the Austro-Turkish war (1683-1699), Calvin's novel sets as its central theme the problem of a modern man (an intellectual, more precisely) who is split in half, i.e. split in half, into two parts. Precisely for this purpose, the protagonist is cut in half (by a cannon ball) along the fault line of good and evil, building a kind of metaphor for the whole story that symbolizes good and evil, the incompleteness of man and the possible states of the human spirit. Therefore, it could be defined as a philosophical novel. Other characters are lepers (ie decadent artists), a doctor of dubious ability (Trelawney) and a carpenter (Pietrochiodo), who represent the science and technology present in humanity.