Passio

Florence, around 1500: once the friar Savonarola has gone to the scaffold and the flames, Princess Vasari may wear fine clothes again, including a splendid jewel from her husband. She knows the bitter reason behind the present, tells no one, and takes the piece to her grave. Fifty years on, in Venice's Cannaregio ghetto, the goldsmith Yakob Masri conceals it beneath his floor while the son of a dying, brutal Murano mirror magnate comes to squeeze him, and the Jewish family flees to Vienna. Recut and resold, the jewel moves through the centuries to Kraków and on northward until it reaches Finland. Its owners all search for a meaning to life, through faith, spirit or ideology, and some survive only through family ties.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

732 pages in the original

Genres

Historical, Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

Italy, Austria, Poland, Finland

First published

2021 by Siltala

Author's age

72 when first published

ISBN

9789522349286 (original)