''Leila; or, The Siege of Granada'' is a historical romance novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton published in 1838. The novel is set in

Granada Granada ( ; ) is the capital city of the province of Granada, in the autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Andalusia, Spain. Granada is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada (Spain), Sierra Nevada mountains, at the confluence ...

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

at the end of the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

— beginning in the summer of 1491. It was originally published in an expensive form, with many engraved illustrations. The preface to the 1860 edition explains that the novel has been less popular than his other works of fiction due to the prejudice against literary works that are thought to owe their value, in part, to the illustrations.

Plot

In ''Leila'', as the double title suggests, there is a double storyline: the domestic story of the daughter (Leila) and the public story of the nation. Leila's father, Almamen, switches allegiances between Christian and Moor in what eventually becomes the famous Siege of Granada. Almamen attempts to guard his daughter's Jewish heritage by keeping her away from her Moorish lover, Muza. He inadvertently delivers her into the hands of the Christian monarchs, and Leila is subjected to the procedures of conversion by the queen's intermediary, Donna Inez. In the double story line, the conquest of Muslim Granada runs parallel to the conversion of the Jewish Leila. The characters meet at the altar of a convent in which Leila is about to take her vows as a nun, and her father kills her. The domestic plot parallels the Christianization of Spain.

Adaptations

Giuseppe Apolloni: L'ebreo opera

References

Novels by Edward Bulwer-Lytton 1838 British novels Historical romance novels {{1830s-hist-novel-stub