By Anna Mazzola Rizwana Naqvi
The Book of Secrets
By Anna Mazzola
Orion Books
ISBN: 978-1-3987-1432-8
374pp.
Anna Mazzola’s latest book, The Book of Secrets, which deals with 17th century Rome, reminds us that witchcraft, sorcery, black magic, poisons and potions to counter various ills are not just confined to our society. Neither are they new to the world. Now reduced greatly in the developed world, they were quite rampant in Europe a few centuries ago.
Mazzola is an award-winning novelist and writes historical and Gothic fiction. Her debut novel, The Unseen, won an Edgar Allan Poe Award. She is also a human rights and criminal justice solicitor, who works with victims of crime.
In The Book of Secrets, in the year 1659, months after the plague ravaged Rome, men were still dying in higher than expected numbers and there were rumours that their corpses didn’t seem to be decaying as quickly as they should, and still held a glow of health on burial. It is amid such rumours that Stefano Bracchi, a junior magistrate at the Papal