Book festival: Pope Innocent's 'little sin' sweeps a novel off the shelves

Published on Thursday 21 August 2008 09:08

IT SEEMS incredible that, in Europe in 2008, a historical novel based on events which took place in the 1680s can cause a controversy so bitter that it is withdrawn from publication. Yet this is the story of Imprimatur, by Rita Monaldi and Francesco Sorti, which is attracting praise all over the world but is virtually unknown in their homeland of Italy.

In researching the life of Atto Melani, an acclaimed castrato singer, diplomat, friend of popes and spy for Louis XIV, the writers discovered documents in the archives of the Vatican which they believe prove that Pope Innocent XI financed the Protestant invasion of England by William of Orange.

Unknown to them, their discovery coincided with an attempt to canonise Innocent XI, his role in helping to repel the Ottomans in the siege of Vienna in 1683 making him a hero suitable for sainthood in the wake of 9/11. Monaldi and Sorti, a married couple who write collaboratively, found their book disappearing from bookshops and catalogues, and made the decision to cancel their contract with their Italian publisher.

In fact, Innocent XI's "little sin" is but a small cog in the vast, sweeping wheel of Imprimatur. Influenced, Sorti says, by both Boccaccio and Agatha Christie, it opens in a tavern in Rome in 1683 where the guests are quarantined from plague, then spins into the political landscape of Europe.

Put this explosive story together with bestselling Kate Mosse, and you have a compelling Book Festival event. Mosse's new novel, Sepulchre, returns to the mountains of south-west France, following the parallel adventures of a spoilt schoolgirl from late 19th-century Paris and a modern American academic, in what Mosse describes as "a ghost story which scared the hell out of me when I was writing it".

Some of the most powerful novels ever written are those which look at the world in part through the eyes of a child, a theme that was revisited later by three Scottish debut novelists, Carlos Alba, Chris Hannan and Billy Cowie, in three radically different ways.

And childhood itself was addressed more directly by literacy expert Sue Palmer, author of Toxic Childhood. Asking her audience to reflect on their own experience of play, she indicated how much childhood has changed in 20 years, with the unchecked outdoor play most of us remember being largely replaced by TV and technology. Yet instead of being a prophet of doom, Palmer encouraged parents that giving their children "real food, real play and real human interactions" is all that is needed to enable the developments we once took for granted.