The Pope's Rhinoceros - Softcover

Norfolk, Lawrence

3.49

546 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805054758 ISBN 13: 9780805054750

Publisher: Holt Paperbacks, 1997

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Norfolk's rollicking, picaresque novel is based on one of history's most bizarre chapters: the attempt in the sixteenth century to procure a rhinoceros as a bribe for Pope Leo X. With an epic cast of characters, The Pope's Rhinoceros is both a fabulous adventure tale and a portrait of an age rushing headlong into crisis.

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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.

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