Intrigues from Byzantium

The new historical novel by Liliana Madeo

A novel about Antonina and Thedora, the powerful women of Byzantium. The former, - the protagonist of the story – was “daughter and granddaughter of charioteers, who became the wife of the greatest general of the empire, Belisarius”. The latter, the “daughter of a bear keeper, actress, mime, dancer, taken to be the wife by the emperor Justinian”. “Two friends, charming and shameless, wicked and magnanimous, who came out of the slums and rose to the top of society in the Byzantium of the sixth century”. This is how Liliana Madeo introduces them in her “letter from the author”, who wrote Si regalavano infamie [Infamies Were Given], (Tullio Pironti editions). The title is borrowed from the synthesis of the relationship between these two women by the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea, author of an important historiographic work such as Storia delle guerre [History of the Wars], and also of Storia segreta [Secret History], a libelous booklet against Justinian. The writing is that of the reporter, which Madeo was for years working in a major Italian newspaper. The passion is of the narrator who has already tried her hand at the historical novel, Ottavia. La prima moglie di Nerone, [Octavia. Nero’s First Wife], Oscar Storie Mondadori. (WCW)