Pasja with delivery to Ireland

A SURPRISING HISTORY OF EUROPE AND OF A CERTAIN JEWEL PASSED FROM HAND TO HAND. It is May, and in Renaissance Florence the famous friar Savonarola has just been burned at the stake, while the townspeople return to their normal lives. The Duchess Vasari can once again wear her precious jewel – a necklace depicting the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The duchess knows why her husband gave her this gift, but she decides to take it with her to the grave. Yet human desire for riches is insatiable, and the jewel is dug up by a gravedigger, then falls into the hands of a Jewish goldsmith in Venice. From Italy it makes its way to Vienna and Kraków, reaches the Russia of Catherine the Great, and then travels through Northern Europe all the way to the Solovetsky Islands. Gold changes its form, but remains something lasting and immortal – something that no one can, or ever will be able to, possess for ever. In this masterly novel, nominated for the Finlandia Prize 2021, Saisio creates a complex portrait of human nature, which does not change with the passing of time.