As the novel opens, Mateo Colombo, the most famous physician in Renaissance Italy, finds himself behind bars at the behest of Church authorities. He has been charged with heresy, but not for organizing a clumsy team of body snatchers to feed his anatomical research, nor for his obsessive pursuit of Mona Soba, Venice's most beautiful prostitute. His crime ins even more heinous, not only heretical in the Church's eyes, but equally subversive of the whole secular order of Renaissance society.

Like his namesake Christopher Columbus, he has made a discovery of enormous significance for mankind. But whereas Christopher voyaged outward to explore the world and found America, Mateo looked inward and uncovered the clitoris.

Based on historical fact, The Anatomist is an utterly fascinating excursion into Renaissance Italy. Above all, it is an audacious novel, exposing not only the social hypocrisies of the day, but also the prejudices and sexual taboos that may still be with us four hundred years later.