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In sixteenth-centruy Venice, celebrated physician Mateo Colombo finds himself behind bars at the behest of the Church authorities. His is a crime of disclosure, heinous and heretical in the Church's eyes, in that his research threatens to subvert the whole secular order of Renaissance society. Like his namesake Christopher Colombus, he has made a discovery of enormous significance for humankind. Whereas Colombus voyaged outward to explore the world and found the Americas, Mateo Colombo looked inward, across the mons veneris, and uncovered the clitoris. Based on historical fact, The Anatomist is an utterly fascinating excursion into Renaissance Italy, as evocative of time and place as the work of Umberto Eco, and reminiscent of the earthy sensuality of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Perceptive and stirring, it ironically exposes not only the social hypocracies of the day, but also the prejudices and sexual taboos that may still be with us four hundred years later.
224 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
In the Catalogo di tutte le puttane del bordello con il lor prezzo, her name appeared printed in bold letters and her price in even more remarkable numbers: 10 ducats. That is to say, six ducats more expensive than the legendary Lenna Grifa. In the catalog, carefully compiled and edited for discerning travelers, no mention was made of her eyes green as emeralds, nor of her nipples hard as almonds whose diameter and texture might be compared to the petals of a flower – if ever there were such petals of the diameter and texture of Mona Sofia's nipples. Nor did it make mention of her firm animal thighs, as if rounded on a lathe, nor of her voice like crackling wood. It made no mention of her tiny hands that seemed hardly large enough to encircle a male organ, nor of her diminutive mouth whose cavity one would have thought unable to receive a fully engorged member. Nor did it mention her whorish talents, capable of arousing even an enfeebled old man.




