Waking Raphael - Leslie Forbes

1933: in a country rocked by corruption trials involving government, big business and the Vatican, people in the idyllic small city of Urbino, Raphael's birthplace, appear more concerned with love affairs than politics, their only worry an outbreak of spurious miracles. Then Count Malaspino returns after years away and his support for the restoration of Raphael's 'La Muta' ('the mute woman') drives a living mute to an act of violence. Does this woman know something terrible about Malaspino's past? Did she witness a literally 'unspeakable' crime that could shatter the peace of Urbino? Both a political thriller and an examination of our miraculous capacity for restoration, WAKING RAPHAEL recreates an Italy where the comic and the tragic, the romantic and the violent, are brilliantly evoked.

ISBN: 9780297829843

Pages: 374

Hardcover with dustjacket

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003

Fair condition; pages tanned

B48