I am, I believe, alone of all our race, the only man in human memory to have been shipwrecked and cast up upon a deserted ship.

So begin the journals of Roberto della Griva, a seventeenth-century nobleman who finds himself on board a mysterious ship anchored in the bay of a beautiful island he cannot reach. The story of how he got there, and what he finds on board, are just a part of this exquisitely crafted novel that celebrates the romance, war, politics, philosophy, and science of the Baroque period in all its lush and colorful detail.

Penguin, 1996.
ISBN: 9780140259193. 514 pp.
Softcover. Fine.