Tigana
| Author | Guy Gavriel Kay |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Mel Odom |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Penguin Canada |
|
Publication date
|
August 1990 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 673 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 21332269 |
Tigana (1990) is a fantasy novel by Guy Gavriel Kay, set in a fictional country, the Peninsula of the Palm, that somewhat resembles medieval Italy as well as the Peloponnese in shape.
The world where Tigana takes place is a planet orbited by two moons. Kay notes that some of his readers tried to connect Tigana with A Song for Arbonne speculating the stories take place on the same fictional world, orbited by two moons; Kay explained that he only repeated the same theme rather than attempting to expand his canon.
Action is centered on the Peninsula of the Palm which shares a common culture and language, but, like medieval Italy, is not a unified nation, comprising instead nine provinces with a long history of internecine struggle. The provinces are: Asoli, Astibar, Certando, Chiara, Corte, Ferraut, Senzio, Tigana, and Tregea. With great subtlety, Kay conveys the fact that all this takes place in the Southern Hemisphere of the unnamed world.
This internal conflict facilitates the conquest of the region by two powerful sorcerers: Brandin, the King of Ygrath, and Alberico, an independent warlord from the empire of Barbadior. The two sorcerers conquered simultaneously but independently the peninsula, and have divided it in an uneasy balance of power.
The religion of the Palm is centered on a triad of deities, a God and two Goddesses; the one being his sister-wife and the other being their daughter. An annual feast celebrates the torment and deicide of the God by his sister-wife and daughter, their eating of his flesh, and his rebirth.
The riselka is the only supernatural creature of the book. Based on the rusalka of Slavic folklore and mythology, its appearance in Kay's world is a token of some portent. A portion of it reads as follows:
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