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Discuss art, life, culture and creativity from the comfort of your own home at the QAGOMA Members Virtual Book Club or join us at one of the meetings at the Gallery. The titles on the reading list until November connect to, contextualise and discuss the ideas presented in ‘European Masterpieces from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York’, organised by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in collaboration with the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art and Art Exhibitions Australia. Sudden Death (2013), by Álvaro Enrigue Session 1: Wed 20 Oct, 3.00pm | Virtual Session 2: Thu 21 Oct, 10.30am | On-site Session 3: Sat 23 Oct, 3.00pm | On-site A daring, kaleidoscopic novel about the clash of empires and ideas, told through a tennis match in the sixteenth century between the radical Italian artist Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo, played with a ball made from the hair of the beheaded Anne Boleyn. The poet and the artist battle it out in Rome before a crowd that includes Galileo, a Mary Magdalene, and a generation of popes who would throw the world into flames. Álvaro Enrigue’s mind-bending story features assassinations and executions, hallucinogenic mushrooms, bawdy criminals, carnal liaisons and papal schemes, artistic and religious revolutions, love and war. A blazingly original voice and a postmodern visionary, Enrigue tells the grand adventure of the dawn of the modern era, breaking down traditions and upending expectations, in this bold, powerful gut-punch of a novel. Virtual Book Club: Free for Members / $5 Members' Guests On-site Book Club: $12 Members / $17 Members' Guests (includes refreshments) Members receive 20% off current and past Book Club titles from the QAGOMA Store. 'European Masterpieces' Reading List -The Goldfinch (2013) by Donna Tartt -The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez (2016) by Laura Cumming -The Birth of Venus (2003) by Sarah Dunant -Metropolitan Stories: A Novel (2021) by Christine Coulson -Sudden Death (2013) by Álvaro Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer -Girl in Hyacinth Blue (1999) by Susan Vreeland