The Pope's Rhinoceros (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780802139887)

The Pope's Rhinoceros is a vivid, antic, and picaresque novel spun around one of history's most bizarre chapters: the sixteenth-century attempt to procure a rhinoceros as a bribe for Pope Leo X. In February 1516, a Portuguese ship sank off the coast of Italy. The Nostra Senora de Ajuda had sailed fourteen thousand miles from the Indian kingdom of Gujarat. her mission: to bribe the "pleasure-loving Pope" into favoring expansionist Portugal over her rival Spain with the most exotic and least likely of gifts--a living rhinoceros. Moving from the herring colonies of the Baltic Sea to the West African rain forest, with a cast of characters including an order of reculsive monks and Rome's corrupt cardinals, courtesans, ambassadors, and nobles, The Pope's Rhinoceros is at once a fantastic adventure tale and a portrait of an age rushing headlong to its crisis.

Author: Lawrence Norfolk
ISBN-10: 0802139884
ISBN-13: 9780802139887
Publisher: Grove Press
Language: English
Published: 04/14/2003
Pages: 574
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.44lbs
Size: 8.24h x 5.56w x 1.21d