Opening Line: The Visit of the Royal Physician by Per Olov Enquist

This blog is undergoing revision; a temporary archive of the Opening Line series can be found here. 

Johann Friedrich Struensee was appointed Royal Physician to King Christian VII on April 5, 1768, and four years later he was executed. 

Sounds like the beginning of a popular history book, doesn't it? But in fact, this is The Visit of the Royal Physician, an historical novel by multi-award-winning Swedish author Per Olov Enquist. If the setting sounds familiar, it's probably because of...