Novels in Florence #27: The Memory Cathedral

The Memory Cathedral is the secret history of Leonardo da Vinci, adventurer, traveller, inventor, and lover of Lorenzo the Magnificent′s mistress.

Based on Leonardo′s own notebooks, this expansive, multi-layered novel is ostensibly about Leonardo′s flying machines.

But it is really a magical exploration of the man, his drives, his loves, his friends, and fabulous inventions. It takes place in the Florence of Lorenzo de Medici and in the fabled, mythical east. Indeed, there is real evidence that Leonardo travelled to Egypt and Persia under the protection of the Devatdar of Syria, Lieutenant of the Sacred Sultan of Babylon.

Imagine what would happen if Leonardo de Vinci had been given the chance to put his fabulous inventions to use - his bombs and machine guns and submarines and tanks and flying machines. Imagine Leonardo and a young Niccolo Machiavelli flying in a balloon over Egypt. Imagine Leonardo′s closest friend Sandro Botticelli being exorcised in Florence and riding through deserts with the Caliph of Egypt. Imagine living in the dangerous day to day world of the Renaissance and knowing intimately the greatest personages of the age.

That is the experience of reading The Memory Cathedral. (from jacket notes - Bantam Books)

The Memory Cathedral, Jack Dann, Bantam Books, 1996

Novels in Florence #26: Incognita

This is the only available edition of a brilliant novel by the leading Restoration dramatist and author of The Way of the World.
Masked balls, mistaken identity, and fanciful deceits run riot in this hilarious tale of love and intrigue by the master of the Restoration comedy.
Returning to Florence on the occasion of his eighteenth birthday, Aurelian - together with his sworn companion Hippolito - dons his disguise in anticipation of the famous Florentine ball. Once there, the two are soon separated, and each finds himself paired off with a beautiful - and masked - woman.
Whilst Aurelian yearns to learn the true identity of his 'love', Hippolito is mistaken for another and brazenly plays along with the conceit. Chaos abounds as masks are dropped, truth revealed, and, somehow, all ends happily. (from jacket notes - Hesperus Press)
William Congreve (1670-1729), the most celebrated of the Restoration comedy writers, was the son of an English officer living in Ireland, and was educated at Trinity, Dublin. His first play, The Old Bachelor, written at the age of twenty-three, was a great success. The Double Dealer, following almost immediately, brought forth the praise of Dryden, the autocrat of English letters. At the age of twenty-seven Congreve had gained a prestige scarcely less in importance than that of Dryden himself. Not only as a comic wit, but as a writer of noble tragedy was he esteemed.
In his praise it should be said that, for almost the first time in England, he brought to the service of the stage a painstaking art. He cared much about the way a sentence was built, about balance, and getting the right shade of meaning. His diction is exactly fitted for oral use; and his pictures of the world of wealth and fashion are diverting. Congreve is, perhaps, the only English writer who can really be compared with Molière.
Incognita, William Congreve, Hesperus Classics, 2003