The Madrid reading and reception for Bianca’s Cure
Saturday, May 16
Secret Kingdoms
20:00
Secret Kingdoms writes:
Navigate love, politics, and patriarchal constraints
Whilst searching for a cure for Malaria with author Gigi Berardi –
A Renaissance version of Lessons in Chemistry, in Bianca’s Cure, a single-minded young woman pursues early chemistry in a world filled with alchemy and superstition, religious dogma, and political treachery—including within her own family. Her cause is curing malaria, known in 16th-century Madrid as calenturas or paludismo or, in Arabic, الحمى الغب; and in Florence, as febbre terzana or quaterna.
Her tool, artemisia—almost five centuries before the Nobel Prize was awarded to a Chinese woman scientist for discovering a cure with the same bitter herb. Bianca’s quest takes her to whore houses, garden shacks, palaces, and sick houses—colliding with a city’s intensifying illness. Also available in Italian as La Cure di Bianca (Casa Croce).