Laurent Binet – författare

I februari 1980 blir den kände litteraturforskaren Roland Barthes påkörd i Paris när han korsar gatan efter en lunch hos president Mitterrand. En månad senare avlider han i sviterna efter olyckan.

Men tänk om det inte var en olycka? Tänk om Barthes bar på en hemlighet så stor att någon beslöt sig för att…mörda honom?

Laurent Binet har skrivit en filosofisk detektivgåta, som med finess och humor tar med läsaren på ett intellektuellt äventyr genom Frankrikes kulturella och politiska elit.

Florence, New Year's Day 1557. As dawn breaks, a painter is discovered lying on the floor of a church, stabbed through the heart. Above him, the paintings he laboured over for more than a decade. At his home, a hidden painting scandalously depicting Maria de Medici, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Florence, as a naked Venus. Who is the murderer? Who is behind the painting? As the city erupts in chaos, Giorgio Vasari, the great art historian, is picked to lead the investigation.Letters fly back and forth carrying news of political plots and speculation about the killer's identity - between Maria and her aunt Catherine de' Medici, the queen of France; between Catherine and her scheming agents in Florence; and between Vasari and his friend Michelangelo. Meanwhile, the Pope is banning books and branding works of art immoral. And the truth, when it comes to light, is as shocking as the bold new artworks that have made Florence the red-hot centre of Europe.Bursting with characters and colour, Perspectives is a mystery like no other that shows us Renaissance Florence as we've never seen it before - a dazzling, hugely entertaining novel of court machinations, murder and art.