'Much more than a portrait of a Congolese herd boy who becomes an important military man, it is a portrait of a vast and chaotic country in a state of near-anarchy. I have long admired Lieve Joris's African books, but this one is both powerful and timely, intensely imagined.' Paul Theroux

A sweeping history of the Age of Reason, which shows how, although it was a time of progress in many areas, it was also an era of brutality and intolerance, by the author of The Borgias and The Florentines.

The fascinating story of the Venetian who helped to map the World during the Renaissance, by the author of A Venetian Affair and Autumn in Venice.