Carmen

A French scholar travelling in Andalusia to look for the site of an ancient battle meets a dangerous bandit and, later, a beautiful gypsy woman in Córdoba. Some months later he finds the bandit in prison awaiting execution, and hears his story: Don José, a soldier from the Basque country, fell in love with Carmen, a cigarette worker in Seville, deserted for her, became a smuggler and a killer, and could not bear to let her go.

Prosper Mérimée (1803–1870) was a writer and also France's inspector of historic monuments, who saved many medieval buildings from ruin. Published in 1845, his short novel became world famous through Bizet's opera of 1875. It is a sharp, unsentimental tale of jealousy and freedom, told with the cool eye of a traveller.