Friday, May 16, 2014
Donatello: Art, Pain, Passion, Murder
“John L’Heureux has built a gripping story of love, genius and betrayal.”
--JM Coetzee, Nobel Prize for Literature, Booker Prize Winner
“Deeply enjoyable, The Medici Boy soars like an operatic aria, before breaking our hearts.”
--David Henry Hwang, playwright, M. Butterfly, Chinglish
“L’Heureux’s
is certainly one of America’s greatest living writers. I’d put him in
the top ten...And now he’s come out with his first new novel in ten
years, The Medici Boy, and it’s a masterpiece, the most ambitious,
beautiful, and complex novel I’ve read this year…”
--David Vann, Financial Times of London
Astor + Blue Editions is proud to release perhaps the most passionate work of master storyteller, John L’Heureux, in The Medici Boy [ISBN: 978-1-938231-50-6
(Hard Cover); ISBN: 978-1-938231-48-3 (E-book); US $25.95; Historical /
Literary Fiction; 346 Pages, April, 2014]. Described as “one of America’s greatest living writers” by the Financial Times of London,
L’Heureux returns with a long-awaited new historical fiction novel; the
result of years of research—backed by a Guggenheim Grant—on location in
Europe.
In this well-conceived, historically accurate rendering, the Renaissance
worlds of art, politics and passion collide. With his distinct style
and rich, sinewy narrative, L’Heureux ingeniously transports the reader
to Donatello’s Renaissance Italy—directly into his bottega, (workshop), as witnessed through the eyes of Luca Mattei, a devoted assistant.
While creating his famous bronze of David and Goliath,
Donatello’s passion for his enormously beautiful model and part time
rent boy, Agnolo, ignites a dangerous jealousy that ultimately leads to
murder. Luca, the complex and conflicted assistant, will sacrifice all
to save Donatello, even his master’s friend—the great patron of art,
Cosimo de’ Medici.
John
L’Heureux’s long-awaited hardcover delivers both a monumental and
intimate narrative of the creative genius, Donatello, at the height of
his powers. With incisive detail, L’Heureux artfully renders the master
sculptor’s forbidden homosexual passions, and the artistry that
enthralled the leading—and competing—powerbrokers of Renaissance
Florence: the Medici and Albizzi families. The finished work is a
sumptuously detailed narrative that entertains while it delves deeply
into both the sacred and the profane within one of the Italian
Renaissance’s most consequential cities, fifteenth century Florence.
###
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Award-winning
poet, novelist, and short story writer, John L’Heureux has taught at
Georgetown University, Tufts, Harvard, and (for more than 35 years) in
the English Department of Stanford University where he was Lane
Professor of Humanities. There he received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and earned it again in 1998.
A prolific writer, L’Heureux has written more than twenty books of fiction, short fiction and poetry. His works have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper’s, The New Yorker, and have been included in dozens of anthologies including Best American Stories and Prize Stories: the O. Henry Awards.
John
L’Heureux has twice received writing fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Arts and in 2006 he was awarded a Guggenheim Grant to
do research for The Medici Boy, his new novel.
He is retired and lives in Palo Alto with his wife Joan.
###
You can check out the cinematic book trailer in the link below:
Also, this book has got some press from the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book-world-the-medici-boy-by-john-lheureux/2014/05/04/82984268-cf1c-11e3-a6b1-45c4dffb85a6_story.html?wprss=rss_entertainment
Do check it out when you can!
Post a Comment