Waking Raphael has all the ingredients one could hope for from a thriller set in Italy: corruption, art, religion, food and very nasty, mafia-style murders. Among the characters are a prim English art-restorer ripe for unbuttoning, a bimbo television presenter, a dodgy aristo, and a butcher who sings as he slaughters.
The result is imaginative and entertaining but also highly informative about Italian history and the murky world of the Renaissance (did you know that poor Umbrians sometimes sent their sons to be gelded by the area’s skilled slaughterers in the hope that they might find fortune as castrato singers? In the context of this novel it is information one receives with a shudder).
The novel is set in the Umbrian city of Urbino, in 1993. The mani pulite (‘Clean Hands’) anti-corruption trials are in progress, and more than half the members of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies have been served notice that they are under suspicion. Silvio Berlusconi’s presidency is safe, however, so long as his football team, AC Milan, keeps winning.
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