We are absolutely thrilled to welcome the award-winning scientist and conservationist, Dr Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi, to discuss his debut novel, The Ghost of the Mountains: Unravelling the Secrets of the Snow Leopard. The Ghost of the Mountains is a story of discovery, conservation and adventure on the trail of one of the most elusive and mysterious predators, brought to life by the world-leading expert on snow leopards.

Date:
Thursday 22nd of October

Venue:
Max Minerva's, 47 Henleaze Road, BS9 4JU

Time:
Doors at 18:30. Discussion at 19:00. Finish approx 20:00.

Tickets:
£6 ticket only
£14.99 ticket with Florenzer (paperback)

You don't need to bring your ticket with you, we will have a list of names on the door. Books will be available to buy on the night. 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Florenzer

THE DAZZLING NEW HISTORICAL FICTION NOVEL FOR FANS OF THE SONG OF ACHILLES AND MARRIAGE PORTRAIT.

15th-century Florence: where the river runs red with slaughterhouse blood and bronze statues glow in every square. Into its fold comes a young Leonardo da Vinci. Wayward and dreamy, he is different from the other artists' apprentices, drawn to what passes behind veils of steam in the baths and along the moonlit banks of the Arno.

Such habits have long belonged to Florence, but they carry risk in a city where anonymous accusations slipped into letterboxes destroy reputations overnight. Alongside Leonardo, two men pursue their own forms of immortality: Francesco Salviati, a priest willing to endure any degradation in the name of salvation, and Lorenzo de' Medici, heir to a great banking fortune, for whom wealth proves a shifting, uncertain thing.

Weaving together these three lives, Florenzer is a sensuous and richly imagined portrait of a city that paints over its own decay; where an untested artist, not yet marked by greatness, will dare to follow his most unholy desires.

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'The rift between Rome and Florence brings Melanson's three characters together in a bloody, vivid climax. All three characters are superbly drawn and Renaissance Florence leaps from the page...A stunning debut.' - The Times

'A captivating portrait of an all-too-human genius - subtle, erudite and exquisitely sexy.' - James Cahill, author of The Violet Hour

'Florenzer is a heady, intoxicating debut that examines the meaning of art in a time of turmoil. Melanson draws subtle, intimate portraits of his three protagonists, each of them caught between the worldly and the divine. Tortured Leonardo, ambitious Lorenzo and fanatical Salviati: the lives of these men intersect in surprising and sometimes bloody ways in the cutthroat world of Renaissance Italy. Told in rich, vivid prose, passion and desire permeate every page.' - Danielle Giles, author of Mere

'Introduces us to a teenage Leonardo still struggling to find himself amid the roiling artistic and political atmosphere of late-15th-century Florence... For a young man sexually attracted to other young men, this can be particularly dangerous...Yet his work may be his salvation.' - New York Times Book Review

'Impressively ambitious. . . An enjoyably sticky web of intrigue is spun, with much gossiping, bribing and backstabbing, and much shifting of allegiance between the great centres of power on the peninsula.' - TLS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Phil Melanson is the author of the queer historical novel Florenzer, which was a National Bestseller, long-listed for the Centre for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and an Allstora “(Very) Gay Book Club” Selection. He is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and the University of Warwick, and in another life was a digital marketer for Hollywood film studios, working on campaigns for movies such as Little Women, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and Once Upon on a Time… in Hollywood. He teaches with Boston University in London, where he lives with his husband.