the last book I ever read (Optic Nerve by María Gainza, excerpt one)

from Optic Nerve by María Gainza (Translated by Thomas Bunstead):

Hunting scenes were quite common in Dreux’s day, evocations of a sport that had been a class marker since the Middle Ages, when the hunt became an elite pastime and often the only means of preparing men for war. An unintended by-product was that it gave the nobility a way of measuring itself—though only against itself. The first eve enclosures of forests and common land came about to enable exclusive access to big game. Commoners had to make do with birds and rabbits; bears, wolves, and deer became the landowner’s right.