Description The romance of the physician Valentine and blind Julia provides the central thread of this engrossing novel, which brings alive the world of the Roman Empire at a time when Christians were amongst those whose deaths provided public entertainment in the Flavian Amphitheatre and the Circus Maximus.
It is a novel with remarkable resonances, its ideas startlingly relevant to our own times: globalisation vs. fundamentalism, reason vs. superstition, civil law vs. personal freedom, the perverse gratifications of sex and violence, the subversion of virtue by wealth – and the power of passionate love to overcome all obstacles to its consummation.
Author Chet Raymo’s novel, The Dork of Cork, was translated into fourteen languages and filmed as Frankie Starlight. The Los Angeles Times described it as "Moving... memorable... a richly poetic book about beauty and destiny, at once compelling and complex." His acclaimed first novel, In the Falcon's Claw was also widely published in translation and described by Le Figaro Litteraire as "A novel of never-ending pleasure... superbly innovative."
A winner of a Lannan Literary Award, his non-fiction includes Skeptics and True Believers, The Soul of the Night, Honey from Stone, and The Path: A one-mile walk through the universe.
"A travel book about the world of ideas. Raymo uses the natural setting of Dingle as a place in which he asks you to explore with him through his own private universe." Irish Echo
