. "Electronic books"@en . "Historical fiction"@en . "Historical fiction" . . "It is Florence, 1691. The Renaissance is long gone, and the city is a dark, repressive place, where everything is forbidden and anything is possible. The Enlightenment may be just around the corner, but knowledge is still the property of the few, and they guard it fiercely. Art, sex and power, these, as always, are the obsessions. Facing serious criminal charges, Gaetano Zummo is forced to flee his native Siracusa at the age of twenty, first to Palermo, then Naples, but always has the feeling that he is being pursued by his past, and that he will never be free of it. Zummo works an artist in wax. He is fascinated by the plague, and makes small wooden cabinets in which he places graphic, tortured models of the dead and dying. But Cosimo III, Tuscany's penultimate Medici ruler, gives Zummo his most challenging commission yet, and as he tackles it his path entwines with that of the apothecary's daughter Faustina, whose secret is even more explosive than his." . "Verzwijging" . . . . . . . . . . . "Miscellaneous fiction" . . . . . . . . . . . "Wanneer een Siciliaanse kunstenaar eind 17e eeuw voor een opdracht naar Florence trekt, komt hij nauw in aanraking met de terreurdaden van de Inquisitie." . "Secrecy a novel"@en . . . . "A sorcerer in wax. A fugitive. Haunted by a past he cannot escape. Threatened by a future he cannot imagine. Zummo, a Sicilian sculptor, is summoned by Cosimo III to join the Medici court. Late seventeenth-century Florence is a hotbed of repression and hypocrisy. All forms of pleasure are brutally punished, and the Grand Duke himself, a man for whom marriage has been an exquisite torture, hides his pain beneath a show of excessive piety. The Grand Duke asks Zummo to produce a life-size woman out of wax, an antidote to the French wife who made him suffer so. As Zummo wrestles with this unique commission, he falls under the spell of a woman whose elusiveness mirrors his own, but whose secrets are far more explosive. Lurking in the wings is the poisonous Dominican priest, Stufa, who has it within his power to destroy Zummo's livelihood, if not his life. In this highly charged novel, Thomson brings Florence to life in all its vibrant sensuality, while remaining entirely contemporary in his exploration of the tensions between love and solitude, beauty and decay. When reality becomes threatening, not to say unfathomable, survival strategies are tested to the limit. Redemption is a possibility, but only if the agonies of death and separation can be transcended."@en . . . . "Fiction" . "History"@en . "History" . "Fiction"@en . "Secrecy" . "Secrecy"@en . "In seventeenth-century Florence, Zummo, a Sicilian sculptor, is secretly charged by the Grand Duke to create a life-size wax replica of a woman and finds himself surrounded by a web of jealousies and betrayals, as he takes a lover and is shadowed by a mysterious priest." . "Zummo, a Sicilian sculptor, is summoned by Cosimo III to join the Medici court. Late seventeenth-century Florence is a hotbed of repression and hypocrisy. All forms of pleasure are brutally punished, and the Grand Duke himself, a man for whom marriage has been an exquisite torture, hides his pain beneath a show of excessive piety."@en . "Zummo, a Sicilian sculptor, is summoned by Cosimo III to join the Medici court. Late seventeenth-century Florence is a hotbed of repression and hypocrisy. All forms of pleasure are brutally punished, and the Grand Duke himself, a man for whom marriage has been an exquisite torture, hides his pain beneath a show of excessive piety." . . . "Secrecy : a novel" . . . . . . . "Secrecy : A Novel"@en . . "Crime." . . "Historischer Roman." . . "Florence (Italy) / History / 1737-1860 / Fiction." . . "Historical." . . "Fiction." . . "LITERARY CRITICISM European English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh." . . . . "FICTION Historical." . . "Florence (Italy)" . . "Florence (Italie)" . . "Italy" . . "Historical fiction." . . "Roman historique." . . "Literary." . . "1737 - 1860" . . "Englisch." . .