A Blast from the Past

In the jubilee year of 2000, a veteran Australian journalist in Rome, Gerardo Tobino, comes across a down-at-heel but imperious figure who is passed off under the name of Daniele Allegri, The Diviner Comedy being his latest. Tobino recognises him as a reincarnation of Dante Alighieri, who died 700 years ago, and whose biography he has yearned to write.  

Desmond O’Grady is now over ninety, a writer who left Melbourne in his twenties over sixty years ago. He married and remained in Rome, becoming the author of over a dozen books. In addition, he is a widely syndicated journalist, with his reporting on Italian and Vatican affairs, up to the recent Pell imbroglio, published in many of the world’s newspapers, including Australian ones. His saturation in Italy’s culture and its religious past is evident everywhere in this novel and in his journalism. His photo graced the front cover of Quadrant’s edition of February 1971, which included one of his short stories. O’Grady is…