The Royal Physician's Visit

October 22, 2001
For two years in the 1760s, a German doctor, Johann Friedrich Struensee, was the de facto ruler of Denmark, instituting reforms that presaged the French Revolution. This episode of Scandinavian history, largely unfamiliar to U.S. readers, inspired this intriguing novel by one of Sweden's most respected writers. When young Christian VII of Denmark ascends to the throne at age 16 in 1766, he is already insane. Two years later, he is married to George III's sister, Caroline Mathilde. To cure his fear of sex, his courtiers introduce him to Copenhagen's most famous whore, "Bottine" Caterine, but their plans backfire when she gains too much power, and the dowager queen's puritanical tutor, Ove Gunderson, has her kidnapped and exiled from Denmark. Christian immediately organizes a European tour with the secret goal of finding Caterine. Struensee becomes Christian's confidante during this time, and gradually assumes regal power. On their return to Denmark, reforms flow from Christian's pen, under Struensee's influence. After Struensee also becomes Caroline Mathilde's lover, the court takes action: a group led by Gunderson arrests, tortures and executes Struensee on the pretext that he has cuckolded the king. For the rest of his life, Christian exists under the thumb of the unctuous Gunderson. Enquist's spare, elliptical prose slowly gains dramatic momentum, especially when initially cool descriptions segue into sexual passion. The narrative reads like one of Brecht's political parables—an ironic vision of the collision between Enlightenment and madness. (Nov.)Forecast:While it has sold well in 15 countries, this book is not a traditional historical novel. Enquist deliberately eschews the conventions of the genre to produce a tale more concerned with character than with background detail. Discerning readers alerted by the handsome and provocative jacket should find it a literary lagniappe.

Starred review from November 1, 2001
As the 1760s became the 1770s, there was a revolution in Denmark, though the monarchy remained in place. The turnabout took place at the king's elbow, as a German, Johann Friedrich Struensee, the royal physician, issued 632 decrees in King Christian VII's name. Struensee's ability to do this was greatly enhanced by the fact that the king was deranged as the result of severe handling, including daily corporal punishment throughout his childhood, by the aristocrats who actually ran Denmark. But Struensee's was only a paper revolution, and when he fell in love with the teenage queen, the youngest sister of England's George III, his fate was sealed. Overthrown by a cabal led by the puritanical professor-turned-bureaucrat Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Struensee was publicly executed in 1772. The queen was divorced and exiled, and Guldberg became Christian's manager and Denmark's prime minister. Enquist explosively expands this parenthesis in Danish history into an ironized romantic tragedy of a very high order, one that fills the reader with horror and pity on every page. The Swedish novelist's method is to begin 10 years after Struensee's fall, then retrace the "Struensee era," as it came to be called, by probing the characters of four principal players--Christian, Guldberg, Struensee, and Queen Caroline Mathilde--each of whose perspectives, even the king's, he makes intelligible and occasionally even sympathetic. A towering achievement. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)