The Final Novel.
"At this moment, gentlemen, perhaps your fear in passing judgement on me is greater than mine in receiving it."
The final words of Giordano Bruno, Dominican monk and rationalist philosopher, before he was taken to be burned at the stake in Rome's Campo dei Fiori on 17 February 1600. Bruno's beliefs and writings were considered heretical by the Catholic Church. Investigated, and tortured, by the Holy Office of they Inquisition, and imprisoned for seven years in Rome's worst prison, Bruno was given the opportunity to recant but chose instead to die for his beliefs.
Now, four hundred years later, Morris West brings the man back to life. Wracked with doubt and despair, waking each day to the knowledge that he is one step closer to death, Bruno undertakes to leave some record of his existence. Not a chronicle of his life, nor a defence of the opinions which have brought him to this end, but a mosaic of anecdote, allusion, and scraps and shards of memory which, together, create a sense of what West called "the real Bruno within the man's skin". Written with passion and compassion, this is a voice which mesmerises from the first.
Sadly, Morris West died while writing 'The Last Confession'.
