The Anatomy Lesson: A Novel

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.