Drömmen om San Michele: En resa i Axel Munthes fotspår

Axel Munthe: The Road to San Michele tells for the first time the life-story of an extraordinary individual who came to define the times he lived in. The precociously bright son of a Swedish pharmacist, Axel Munthe studied medicine in France and in 1880 became the youngest doctor in French history. By the 1890s, he was world-famous for his healing powers, believed by some to be supernatural. He moved in the most colourful and exalted circles of fin de siecle Europe, counting amongst his friends Henry James, Howard Carter, Rainer Maria Rilke, Lady Ottoline Morrell and Count Zeppelin. Though physician to the Swedish court, where he became the lover of the Crown Princess Victoria, Munthe was more at home with nature than with people. He travelled through remotest Lapland, as well as across Europe, and his great love was animals, which he went to great lengths to protect.