The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (novel)

First published in 1916, it tells a tangled tale of the French and German sons-in-law of an Argentinian landowner who find themselves fighting on opposite sides during the First World War.

Its 1918 English translation by Charlotte Brewster Jordan became the best-selling novel in the US in 1919 according to Publishers Weekly, which hailed it as "a superbly human story told by a genius."

[1] A Frenchman, Marcelo Desnoyers, travels to Argentina in 1870 and marries the elder daughter of Julio Madariaga, the owner of a ranch.

Julio turns out to be a spoiled lazy young man who avoids commitments and flirts with a married woman, Marguerite Laurier.

The allegorical reference to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is stated by "Tchernoff," a man occupying one of the rooms of the apartment building in which Julio resides.