Trýzeň – Saisio Pirkko (2024)

The original chronicle of Europe from the Renaissance to the twentieth century... At the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a Dominican monk, the fanatical preacher Girolamo Savonarola, is burned at the stake in Florence. The city rises from the ashes, and Princess Vasari can finally pin a luxurious golden ornament, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, adorned with gemstones, around her neck without fear. The people's insatiable desire for gold makes the ornament an unconventional main character of the novel, connecting diverse fates across Europe through various epochs. The jewel heads to a Jewish goldsmith in Venice, travels to Vienna, Krakow, to imperial Russia during the time of Catherine the Great, and further through Northern Europe to the Solovetsky Islands during the Soviet era. Gold changes its form, yet remains something permanent, immortal, that no one can and will own forever. In its shine, bare human passions, lust, cruelty, treachery, deceit, and falsehood are reflected, but on the other hand, also pure love, generosity, or kindness. This brilliantly constructed novel is a complex portrait of human natures, diverse and changeable, yet in many ways so similar.