Three Fires

A Novel

Denise Mina

• Publisher: Pegasus Crime
• Year: 2023
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781639364565
• Subtopic: Historical Fiction
• Index: Literature

From the award-winning master of crime fiction, Denise Mina re-imagines the "Bonfire of the Vanities, "a series of fires lit throughout Florence at the end of the fifteenth century—inspired by the fanatical Girolamo Savonarola. Girolamo Savonarola was a Dominican friar living in Florence at the end of the fifteenthcentury. An anti-corruptioncampaigner, his hellfire preaching increasingly spilled overinto tirades against all luxuries that tempted his followers towardsin. These sermons led tothe infamous "Bonfire of the Vanities"—a series of fires lit throughout Florence for theincineration ofeverything from books, extravagant clothing, playing cards, musicalinstruments, make-up, and mirrors to paintings, tapestries, and sculptures.Railing againstthe vice and avarice of the ruling Medici family, he was instrumental in their removal frompower—and for ashort time became the puritanical leader of the city. After turning his attention tocorruption within the Catholic Church, he wasfirst excommunicated and then executedby a combination of hanging and being burnedat the stake.Just as in Rizzio —her latest novel with Pegasus Crime—Denise Mina brings a modern take to this fascinating historical story, drawing parallels betweenthe febrile atmosphere of medieval Florence and the culturewars of the present day. In dramatizing the life and last daysof Savonarola, she explores thedownfall of the original architect of cancel culture and, in the process, explores the never-ending tensions between wealth, inequality, and freedom of speech that so dominate ourmodern world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Epigraph
• Chapter I: The Confession
• Chapter II: An Incel Mishearing
• Chapter III: The Sound of Walnuts Rolling Over Cobbles
• Chapter IV: Deus, Literally, Ex Machina
• Chapter V: God Directs His Chosen Servant to Storm the Conference Circuit
• Chapter VI: When All the Hope Is Gone
• Chapter VII: The Temptation of Girolamo
• Chapter VIII: Apocalypse Then
• Chapter IX: The First Order of any Republican Agenda: The Split
• Chapter X: The Bonfire of the Vanities
• Chapter XI: Enchanted Underpants
• Chapter XII: Who the Fuck Is Fra Enrico?
• Chapter XIII: Strappado
• Chapter XIV: The Final Miracle
• Chapter XV: The New Relics
• About the Author
• Copyright