Rating: 
Summary: Thoroughly enjoyable
Review: A latticework of tales within tales, ranging from Gothic horror, to comedy, to Arabian Night style adventures. The horror element is more pronounced at the beginning of the novel, and the loose ends are tied up rather too rapidly at the end, but the tales themselves are so well written that they carry you along by their own strengths. If you are looking for a simple linear narrative, beware. The novel skips from tale to tale, and characters within tales often tell their own stories, so it can be demanding of the reader's memory. In that sense, the structure is more akin to the time and place shifts used by some modern novelists. The reader's patience is rewarded by a work far superior than Boccaccio, and much better than anything produced by Lawrence Norfolk.
Rating:
Summary: An little known literary gem.
Review: I discovered and read "Manuscript Found in Saragossa" earlier this year. And I cannot get it out of my head! It's everything I ever wanted in a fantasy novel- ghosts, ghouls, occult philosophy, gypsies, romantic landscapes, murder & mayhem, the Kabbalah and sex. What more can a bibliophile want? Treat yourself- get a copy as quickly as possible. Though I prefer the Christine Donougher translation to Ian MacLean's. She more successfully captures the surreal whimsy of the narrative that I feel was Potocki's intention.
Rating: 
Summary: A little-known treasure
Review: I picked this book up with no real idea of its contents, primarily because an author I really enjoy had recommended it on his weblog. Lucky for me, it was an amazing tale, and I read it more or less straight through over one long Saturday. Using the narrative framework of the "story within a story within a story" like the Decameron or the Arabian Nights, Potocki tells one of the most bizarre tales of fantasy, mysticism, and adventure it's ever been my good fortune to read. From the moment Von Worden awakens beneath a gallows where two corpses hang, the author keeps your interest and excitement going until the end...At which point you will say "Huh. That's *it*?" The ending is anticlimactic and lacks the charm of the rest of the novel, and keeps me from giving a full five stars. But this weird book is one of my new favorites, despite the disappointing finale.
Rating:
Summary: A little-known treasure
Review: I picked this book up with no real idea of its contents, primarily because an author I really enjoy had recommended it on his weblog. Lucky for me, it was an amazing tale, and I read it more or less straight through over one long Saturday. Using the narrative framework of the "story within a story within a story" like the Decameron or the Arabian Nights, Potocki tells one of the most bizarre tales of fantasy, mysticism, and adventure it's ever been my good fortune to read. From the moment Von Worden awakens beneath a gallows where two corpses hang, the author keeps your interest and excitement going until the end... At which point you will say "Huh. That's *it*?" The ending is anticlimactic and lacks the charm of the rest of the novel, and keeps me from giving a full five stars. But this weird book is one of my new favorites, despite the disappointing finale.
Rating:
Summary: The Death of Post-Modernism in 19th century
Review: I, remember the first time, when I found this book. It was 1990, and I couldn't believe, that nobody I talked to, knew this masterpiece...Today we have year 2000, but nothing's changed... A must to literatural gourmet!
Rating:
Summary: A Very Palpable Hit
Review: Imagine a book written by Edgar Allen Poe, translated by Edward Fitzgerald, filtered through the consciousness of Jorge Luis Borges, and you would have some inkling of what makes this extraordinary book so special. It is to literature what surrealism is to painting. Potocki, who on the strength of this book alone qualifies as Poland's greatest literary figure, prefigures the postmodern movement with his sleight-of-hand and multi-multi-layered text. A Freudian could spend years investigating the recesses and depths of Potocki's subconscious. The framing device is a young nobleman's romantic wanderings through a section of Spain that could exist only in the mind of someone who was none too selective about his/her diet, or the kind of herbs they decided to ingest. A grotesque and lurid air suffuses this imaginative tale. The plot, if it could be called such a thing, unfolds like a chinese puzzle, one unreliable narrative nested within another. ...It wends its way into your thoughts like an ear-boring worm. It is the sort of work that Danielewski attempted, rather feebly by comparison, in his novel, House of Leaves. Potocki combines the supernatural with the erotic in a way that is unique in literature. Open the pages of this book and prepare to be disturbed and unsettled at times, but be prepared also to engage in a long, strange, diverting trip. By the way there is a CD of a movie version of Manuscript which was made in Europe in the 60s. Apparently it has been shown periodically in San Francisco art houses, and was appreciated by Jerry Garcia, among others. If the movie even approximates the book, I could understand why.
Rating:
Summary: A little known literary gem.
Review: Let's start this review by thanking my fellow reviewers for bringing this little known gem to my attention, since it otherwise would likely have remained unknown to me. With many excellent reviews around I will try to keep it short. The content of the work.
Especially at the end of the book it becomes clear why van Woorden had to hear 66 days worth of stories. Having read the Penguin version of the Arabian Nights about a decade ago, I must say that many of the stories in this book don't live up to that high standard. In addition, and most likely on purpose, the stories start to have many similar elements after a while. The horror, the eroticism, the history, philosophy, and analysis of religion are all wonderful vignettes of a forlorn era. Yet, fall more than a little short to match "the Borges standard". In addition, I do get the idea that remarks by a previous reviewer about this translator underplaying the humor in this work are right on the money. The structure.
While Sterne's Tristram Shandy is often considered as the archetype of the postmodern novel, this book deserves way more than an honorable mention in that category. All these stories within stories within stories give this book a structure that is a true precursor to modern classics like Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest. On top of that the readers DO get the clue at the end and get a narrative whose function is very much dependent on the form. In all, I greatly enjoyed this very individual expression and hope that many fellow fans of the postmodern genre will help Potocki to obtain a more deserving place in literary history.
Rating: 
Summary: Fine book, sub-standard translation
Review: Some previous editions of Jan Potocki's great saga have been severely edited, or else divided over several volumes. One great strength of the present version is its completeness. And while it reads satisfactorily, no version has yet surpassed Elizabeth Abbott's pioneering English translation from the early 60s. Published in two volumes (The Saragossa Manuscript & The New Decameron), Abbott's is the only version that captures the humor of the original -- and let it be said, this is a hilarious novel, full of educated wit and irony (though you wouldn't guess it after reading the somber editions that have come out lately). On one hand, it courts Enlightenment ideas as they meld into what we know as science; on the other, it skewers superstition and religion. Elizabeth Abbott's version may only be available in used or antiquarian book stores, but it's really the only way to enjoy the book as it was intended to be read. Newer fans of this wonderful decameron will discover additional pleasures, and will drawn into the tale all over again. You also may want to rent or purchase the DVD of the great film version. Director Wojeich Has, noted for his meticulous adaptations, captures all the droll humor and twists in narrative in a way that makes the film a cult classic.
Rating:
Summary: A Classic that deserves more attention. Plus its funny!
Review: The book is a collection of intertwining, often hilarious, stories of various natures, styles, and character: gothic, romance, a singular mathmatician, erotica, chivalry, adventure, greed, religion from many perspectives. It seems that this novel deserves to be more popular, it fits the modern attention span with its substratum of vignettes, and the larger grand story that encompasses them, a timeless tale. The book is funny and the message profound, but of the bewildering conundrum sort that some great poems often leave one with, as the story intertwines the symbols of various lives into something that was mature and introspective but uplifting and cathartic -- it doesn't rely on words but on situations to do this; so probably losses little in translation as many poems do. If anything it leaves one with stronger sense of brotherhood and love for one's neighbor. Definitely fits with modern multiculturalism, or what it should be anyway, and I guess the author was also a Freemason; a strange bag of humanism. I will never forget some of the images, Potocki had quite an imagination. There are also a lot of parallels with Parzival (the Grail Story) of the farcical sort. The man who can neither stand, nor sit, nor lie (A symbolic castrated Christian in the Grail); the apostasy of oneÂfs religion for the sake of a beautiful girl(s) (in Parzival the Muslim gives up his religion without a second thought); mindful, mocking anchorites (in the Grail he scolds Parzival for blowing his chance); the lone search verse the social search. How does one end a book like this? I think the question is was it really meant to end?
Rating:
Summary: Traveler's Tales
Review: This is a huge, creaking, Spanish galleon of a book. Centered on tales told by travelers during a sixty-six day mule trip through the mountains of 18th century Spain, it begins to wear on the reader rather like such an arduous journey might. Still, you stick with it, for the scenery if not the destination. It is broken up into reasonably sized chapters, and the chapters are often broken down further into "tales", so you can readily find places to lay it down. The problem is, that the tales are divided and interwoven so intricately, that if you lay it down too many times, then you have to backtrack to refamiliarize yourself with the story and the characters. You have a little of everything in this book, it is really a rather amazing assemblage. You have stories dealing with adventure, romance, the supernatural, history, humor, philosophy, moral instruction, etc. Not only that, but the stories are related by a wide variety of characters in their own words- men and women; Christian, Moslem, and Jew. Yet it is all at least loosely tied into the overall frame work of the story of a young officer of the Walloon Guards, Alphonse van Worden, traveling to Madrid to take up his command- and his relation to the mysterious Gomelez family, and to two hanged brothers- and the remarkable way that characters tend to awaken beneath their common gallows. Even one of the characters in the story, a mathematician, repeatedly states that he has to use mathematical notation to keep all the different storylines straight. I personally believe that the author, Jan Potocki, used this book as a framework to tell the tales that he heard during a lifetime as an adventurer. He was famed for his travels from Siberia to Egypt. Moreover, the late 18th century and early 19th century were a time of story telling. Travelers entertained each other nightly with tales told around an inn or campfire. Story telling was an extremely valuable and respected skill in those days. Potocki here seems to use this book to as a place to hang every remarkable tale that he has ever heard in a remarkable life.
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