The Last Confession

Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar and rationalist philosopher, was burned at the stake in Campo dei Fiori, Rome, on February 17, 1600. Bruno's beliefs and writings were considered heretical by the Catholic Church. Investigated and tortured by the Holy Office of the Inquisition, and imprisoned for seven years in Rome's worst prison, Bruno had the opportunity to recant but chose to die for what he believed in.

Now, four hundred years later, Morris West brings us Bruno's story. It is neither a chronicle of his life nor a defense of the opinions that led to his end, but a mosaic of episodes, allusions, and fragments of memory, reconstructed in the form of a diary and a Last Confession written in the last month of his life.

It is the recreation of the true man beneath the scholar's skin. The controversial, libertine, brilliant man. And his struggle for freedom of thought and expression in an era where the Church held the sole claim to truth. This was Morris West's last novel.