Set in the Dutch Golden Age, an engrossing historical novel that brilliantly imagines the complex story behind one of Rembrandt's most famous paintings
THE ANATOMY LESSON takes us through a single day in Golden Age Amsterdam as the city is preparing for the Winter Festival: executions, followed by a public dissection, and then a banquet and torch parade through town. Via several characters, ranging from a curio dealer who collects bodies for the city's chief anatomist, to philosopher Rene Descartes, the novel tells the imagined tale of how a common thief came to be the muse for the first painting to which a 26-year old artist from Leiden attached his signature: Rembrandt.Â