The Pope's Rhinoceros - Softcover

Norfolk, Lawrence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802139884 ISBN 13: 9780802139887

Publisher: Grove Press, 2003

Synopsis

The Pope's Rhinoceros is a vivid, antic, and picaresque novel spun around one of history's most bizarre chapters: the sixteenth-century attempt to procure a rhinoceros as a bribe for Pope Leo X. In February 1516, a Portuguese ship sank off the coast of Italy. The Nostra Senora de Ajuda had sailed fourteen thousand miles from the Indian kingdom of Gujarat. Her mission: to bribe the "pleasure-loving Pope" into favoring expansionist Portugal over her rival Spain with the most exotic and least likely of gifts -- a living rhinoceros. Moving from the herring colonies of the Baltic Sea to the West African rain forest, with a cast of characters including an order of reclusive monks and Rome's corrupt cardinals, courtesans, ambassadors, and nobles, The Pope's Rhinoceros is at once a fantastic adventure tale and a portrait of an age rushing headlong to its crisis.

About this title

Review:

In the tradition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Umberto Eco, Lawrence Norfolk has created a dizzyingly dense and impressively erudite fantasy of a novel, a vast edifice based around a single, actual historical event: the sinking off the coast of Italy of a Portugese ship bound on a bizarre mission, to deliver an African rhino to Pope Leo X. Norfolk takes his readers on a world tour of the 16th century, from the flophouses of Rome to the rain forest of West Africa, and along the way he piles historical esoterica upon philosophical rumination upon myriad subplots and minor characters. The chains of event and coincidence and the encyclopedic references will exhaust some readers long before the mad quest for the rhino meets its watery end, but Norfolk's baroque talent remains inexhaustible.

From the Inside Flap:

The highly acclaimed author of Lempriere's Dictionary, which was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of 1992, returns with a vivid, antic, and picaresque fictional tapestry--reminiscent of The Name of ther Rose--which spins around one of history's most bizarre chapters: the 16th-century attempt to procure a rhinoceros for the amusement of Pope Leo X.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0802139884
• ISBN 13: 9780802139887
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 592