The Enemies of Women

A prince who swore off women. An adventuress who would prove him wrong. And a war that made fools of them both.

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez's early twentieth-century novel is a provocative exploration of love, pride, and the chaos of war, set against the glamorous backdrop of the French Riviera.

Prince Michael Fedor Lubimoff, a disillusioned Russian aristocrat, declares a radical creed: life would be better without women. He proposes a monastic existence among men, free from the complications and emotional turmoil that women bring. His guests humor him, forming a club they call "the Enemies of Women."

Then Alicia steps in, a beautiful and mysterious adventuress. She and the prince flee together to France, where they begin a passionate affair. But when the prince mistakes her young son for a youthful lover, he abandons her in jealous fury.

But war has a way of upending all certainties. As the Great War rages across Europe, circumstances reunite the prince and Alicia. They find that the enemies of women may, in the end, be their own worst enemies.

This is Blasco Ibáñez at his most worldly and cynical: a novel about the battle of the sexes waged against a continent destroying itself.

• First published in the early 1920s, following the success of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

• Adapted into a 1923 silent film starring Lionel Barrymore

• A classic romantic drama about love, pride, jealousy, and the costs of war

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About the Author

Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1867–1928) was a Spanish novelist, journalist, and political activist, one of the most popular writers of his era. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1916) made him an international celebrity, the first novel to sell over a million copies in the United States. His other major works include Blood and Sand (1908) and The Cabin (1898). He died in France in 1928.