Description
Two artists, separated by centuries, search for peace…
‘John Harvey, who is fascinated by the creative process involved in the making of art, finds the perfect subject in Rubens’ painting “Peace and War” and its themes that intrigue and inspire a contemporary English artist. The result is a many-layered novel, impressively skillful and deeply absorbing.’ ANITA DESAI
‘I’m rather bowled over by this (I think) brilliant novel. The mutual guilts, regrets, love are beautifully dissected, slowly, painfully: while Rubens too yearns and worries: both of them always paint. It is extraordinarily perceptive, humanly and artistically, and beautifully judged, the light against the dark, the lush against the spare, the techniques against the instinctive reflexes ‘ CELIA DALE
When artist Stephen Bloodsmith creates a series of images inspired by Rubens’ trip to London in 1629, he enters a historical world of suspicion and intrigue. But will the manipulations he portrays in art spill over into the real world? When he practises deception inside his own marriage, falling in love with his model even as the romance of his wife Robyn unravels, the corrosive parallels between Bloodsmith’s and Rubens’ lives – the discovery of intimate secrets, the pain caused by desire and jealousy, the consequences of power and conflict – become hard to live with and impossible to ignore.
Rubens believed he could make peace between the warring powers of Europe. To succeed he must win over Charles I of England, while in Paris ‘the Cardinal’ is working to frustrate him. Will nation cheat nation as people deceive one another in their personal lives?
At once an intimate portrait of sexual pain in two centuries and a gripping depiction of international deal-making, Pax is a rich, compelling study of desire, power, art – and the search for private and public peace.
