Cry to Heaven
In eighteenth-century Italy, the Castrati recreated heaven on earth. Their exquisite voices soared above the glittering world of courtiers and nobility. Those who achieved fame were showered with riches and sexual favours, but their success also hid a terrible sadness. Tonio, of noble birth, is the victim of a vengeful brother. Disinherited and forced to join the ranks of the Castrati, he plans his revenge while striving to become the greatest of all singers. Guido, sacrificed to the knife at an early age, composes opera and dreams of the perfect voice to give it life. He discovers Tonio and becomes his teacher. As together they reach the very pinnacle of success, Tonio is pushed to the extremes of endurance as he tries to resolve his lust for glory, and for vengeance.
"Bewitching writing" - Sunday Correspondent
Anne Rice
Anne Rice (born Howard Allen Frances O'Brien; 1941–2021) was an American author of gothic fiction, Christian literature, and erotic literature. She was best known for her series of novels The Vampire Chronicles. Books from The Vampire Chronicles were the subject of two film adaptations - Interview with the Vampire (1994) and Queen of the Damned (2002).
Born in New Orleans, Rice spent much of her early life there before moving to Texas, and later to San Francisco. She was raised in an observant Catholic family but became an agnostic as a young adult. She began her professional writing career with the publication of Interview with the Vampire in 1976, while living in California, and began writing sequels to the novel in the 1980s. In the mid-2000s, following a publicized return to Catholicism, Rice published the novels Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, fictionalized accounts of certain incidents in the life of Jesus. Several years later she distanced herself from organized Christianity, citing disagreement with the Roman Catholic Church's stances on social issues but pledging that faith in God remained "central to [her] life." However, she later considered herself a secular humanist.
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