BOOKS FICTION: IN BRIEF

2 Memoirs of a Gnostic Dwarf by David Madsen, Dedalus pounds 8.99.

David Madsen is the pseudonym of a philosopher and theologian living in Copenhagen. Why a pseudonym, one wonders? Is an interest in ancient heresies somehow intellectually dubious? Madsen's bawdy historical novel details life at the Medici court, recounted by the sardonic dwarf of the title, Peppe:

"His Holiness prefers to play the womanly role, thrashing and squealing beneath some musclebound youth like a bride being penetrated for the first time. Not that I've any personal objection to such behaviour - Leo is Pope after all ... "

Amazingly, Pope Leo X, with his suppurating anus and honking flatulence, turns out to be a delightful character, a true Renaissance prince and, as Peppe has it in the novel's closing pages, "one of the great lights of this dark world". Peppe is his trusted servitor and a secret heretic, trying to keep one step ahead of the Inquisition. The story opens in the Roman slum of Trastevere, where young Peppe lives with his slatternly, abusive mother. The beautiful aristocrat Laura de' Collini rescues and initiates him into a gnostic sect where all the believers are deformed in some way; Laura, like Coleridge's Christabel, has a withered breast and side.

Although Madsen's chief interest in the past seems to be the opportunity it offers for tortures and orgies, this is a rigorous and at times horrifying read, with something darker and deeper in store than the camp excess of the opening chapters.