Sarah Dunant’s latest work of historical fiction, The Marchesa, centres on the life of Isabella d’Este, marchesa of Mantua (1474–1539). Isabella married Francesco Gonzaga, the marchese, at the age of fifteen, and became one of Renaissance Italy’s leading cultural and political figures. A letter-writer and a collector of beautiful objects, she governed Mantua during her husband’s absences. Even without Dunant’s masterful storytelling skills, her life would provide enough material for a fascinating book.

The Marchesa begins with Isabella’s ghost observing the latest scholar to pore over her letters. From there, two timelines – one modern, one historical – unfold. We watch Isabella grow from a teenage bride into a redoubtable, strong-willed figure at court. Meanwhile, a ‘flamboyantly dressed scholar’ reads her letters. ‘The problem with telling a life already lived is that the future gets in the way of the past,’ Isabella says. But in Dunant’s novel, the two work together. 

Isabella’s first-person narration is self-conscious and convincing throughout. The set-up is playful too: her ghost is particularly annoyed when an old male scholar arrives at the archive, so she sends a breeze to rustle his papers. The two narrative strands combine with historical analysis and reproductions of paintings from Isabella’s