These are the confessions of Tommaso Grilli - Court Painter to His Imperial Majesty, portraitist to the Duke of Felsengrunde, Founder and Curator of the Library of Arts, dwarf, whoremonger, forger... The dazzling new novel from the acclaimed author of THE SHIP OF FOOLS follows its narrator from his unhappy beginnings in Renaissance Florence and an unconventional artistic apprenticeship to his accidental - and brief - life of crime in Prague. Stunted in art as in body, he finds his way to the minor German Dukedom of Felsengrunde. There, as curator and (more often than not) 'creator' of the fantastical Library of Arts, he makes himself indispensable to the impoverished duke - with whom his own fortunes will be murderously linked. An adventure story, a thriller, a picaresque fable, ARTS AND WONDERS breathtakingly evokes the ferment of early modern Europe. Beauty and monstrosity, cruelty and kindness: Tommaso Grilli must encounter them all as he learns, in a lifetime, what it means to be truly human. REVIEWS SO FAR 'The story of Tommaso Grilli, a dwarf with a prodigious talent for drawing, is bawdy, funny, dirty and gripping... You don't have to be interested in history or art to love this book - it's just a darn good yarn.' Clare Harris, BIG ISSUE SCOTLAND 'Although this book takes you through a dazzling hoop-la of European cities and curious historical characters, it is the language that is most impressive and rich. Sentences are ribbed with astonishing metaphor. Research is lost in poetry and colour. Above all, Norminton had fun writing this book, expressing himself with great flamboyance and feeling for his characters and the worlds they inhabit. Essentially, this is the story of the outsider, one with an eye for irony and a habit of misadventure. It is the kind of book you walk into a bookshop to find and so often don't - it is artistic and wondrous.' Monique Roffey, ZEMBLA MAGAZINE 'ARTS AND WONDERS is crowded with figures like the pages of a bestiary... Its determined earthiness is balanced by Gregory Norminton's expansive prose, his erudite wit and deft orchestration of the phantasmagoria he conjures... ARTS AND WONDERS is a kind of comedy - intensely soloured, ebullient, farcical but ultimately sad, a tissue of vivid imaginings marshalled with skill.' Matthew Dennison, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'In rich, ripe, robust prose that neither falters nor cloys, Gregory Norminton's second novel is a panorama of court and corruption to stand comparison with Michael Moorcock's GLORIANA or even the TITUS books of Mervyn Peake. Norminton shares their gift for conveying subtle unease, the hairline crack that will eventually shatter the finest marble... Sardonic, carnal, intellectual, violent, urbane, ARTS AND WONDERS delves straight back to the origins of the novel. Norminton indicates as much when he has Tommaso describe his loyal, malodorous comrades of the final book as "what the Spaniards call picaros and we in Italy, less charitably, vagabonds". ARTS AND WONDERS is classic picaresque: a meandering chronicle of the fortunes and adversities of a rogue in the service of sundry masters. Only the element of fantasy is absent. Just as Tommaso forswears lying, Norminton deliberately eschews the supernatural. He brings them all in: alchemists, spiritualists, a man with the head of a cockerel and a whole family of werewolves - none of them the slightest bit magical. Nature has wonders enough, he seems to say. The arts that supplement them are an imposture. Any day now the twilight of the conjurors will yield to the dawn of Enlightenment, and the cabinet of marvels give birth to science.' Colin Greenland, THE GUARDIAN 'His debut, THE SHIP OF FOOLS, was a charming short fable... this second novel sees an author truly grown into his craft. It is assured, ambitious, beautifully written and yet addictive. A big, sweeping, literary, historical novel... A joy to read and highly recommended.' THE BOOKSELLER 'Think Rose Tremain's NIGHT AND SILENCE, with a dash of Andrew Miller's INGENIOUS PAIN. Think a grotesque Fellini take on Renaissance Florence, with a narrator, Tomasso Grilli who tells the story of his life from an inauspicious birth through a picaresque plot that takes him on a journey reminiscent of Tom Jones or Don Quixote... A fabulous book, and Gregory Norminton is already a formidable talent.' THE LEEDS GUIDE EXCERPT Now I shall tell the Truth of it. When I was born (so my father claimed, my mother dying on my birthday) the midwife shrieked 'Mostro! Mostro!' and slipped in amniotic fluid. Striking her head upon a bucket's lip, that impressionable woman lost consciousness. So it fell to my mother, still gushing like a fountain, to smack my bum and set me bawling. She plucked me, marbled grey like tripe, from the linen; whereupon she caught sight of my face and for an instant hesitated to strike. 'Think yourself lucky,' my father would say when he showed me my reflection, 'that a mother's love is blind.' The blow came. I duly cried and turned from grey to pink. There was commotion, and great bustle of relatives in the bedchamber. I was passed from hand to hand, held upside down like Achilles in the Styx, until my father turned my head to the heavens. There were calls for water and towels and a priest. My father kissed my mother�s soaking brow and held her vague fingers. Some wise relation whisked me from the scene: where my mother, interceding for me to the last, expired of aesthetic shock. The loss, to my father, was terrible. I must have heard (for all the amnion in my ears) from that other room, where my aunt gripped me at arm's length, his gulps and groans. Nobody could console him: least of all his guilty, grotesque child. 'Keep him out of here!' my father must have shrieked. 'Keep that killer away!' Thus, before I could speak or even sketch a noose, I was a murderer: guilty of subtle matricide. For several months - long after the baptism and burial - I was entrusted to a wetnurse, one Smeraldina, who must have loved me in some fashion since she allowed me near her breasts. Smeraldina and I occupied the upstairs of my father's house: far from the clutter of his studio, with its drills and chisels and busts of alabaster. My father, for his part, remained below, chained to his work as Ulysses to his mast, for fear of frenzy. There was a contest between us to see who could howl the loudest. I dare say my father won. It was not until Christmas that I was allowed into his presence; and even then Smeraldina had to hold me, with my aunts and uncles (my father's inlaws) presiding over the encounter in case things turned ugly. 'He has the full complement of limbs,' my uncle Umberto ventured, 'and seems properly equipped downstairs. The face is... rather shocking... but then much of it may die down as he grows older.' Anonimo Grilli brandished the sketches he had made, in her lifetime, of my mother. Her rare beauty, her near perfection of figure, were plain for all to see� Had they forgotten? From handsome boughs bad fruit cannot grow. So it followed that I was a changeling, or a demon, smuggled into the lamented womb. Smeraldina, a pious woman, tried to block her ears. She picked me up from the floor and, nervously heeding the in-laws' glances, offered me to the paternal gaze. I was not, by virtue of my deformity, an ingratiating child. Perhaps my wetnurse had trained me to smile at the blur of my father's face. Yes, I smiled and gurgled too. The pink fist of my left hand, upon which my fortune would one day depend, escaped the blanket. And my father, to the held breaths of all assembled, offered his clay-caked finger to my grasp. 'Some bonds can never be broken,' my father told me when, drunk, he referred to this moment. 'I could not reject you Tommaso. And indeed, have I ever? Have I ever, in spite of all, neglected your education?' The in-laws closed in on a scene of reconciliation. Smeraldina, seeing my father's eyes swim at contact with his son, cautiously eased me onto his lap. There I sat, as best I could, still gripping my father's finger, and ogled the implements on his table. Anonimo (for want of a better idea to satisfy his audience) fumbled for a spatula and held it close to my eyes. I must have squinted. 'He will be an artist,' beamed Smeraldina. 'Like his father.' Copyright Gregory Norminton 2001 ARTS AND WONDERS is published by Sceptre in paperback, £7.99.