Roseena Veronika Hussain

‘She wondered if the story of Paolo and Francesca could be worked into her theory on the Romantic Tradition, and thought about the beautiful sentence she had read in a translation of Dante’s account of their fatal kiss: ‘that day they read no more’. She imagined a tiny volume tumbling silently to the ground and a hand in a pointed sleeve outstretched. Dante had placed Paolo and Francesca in the circle of the lustful and it was true that the kiss had been rapidly followed by murder, but the story appealed to Kitty. Reading interrupted by kissing and followed by death seemed to her an entirely natural progression.’

– Anita Brookner, Providence