The Malacia Tapestry

by Brian Aldiss

The Malacia Tapestry is a novel about Perian de Chirolo, a poor young man who is both a rogue and rarely-working actor, in the imaginary city of Malacia, which resembles Renaissance Venice. De Chirolo lives in a humble attic, cadges meals and drinks in taverns, seeks love affairs with many women, and mingles with artists, astrologers, magicians, and nobility in the bustling port town. As the story opens, De Chirolo enjoys his free time with his young friend Guy de Lambert, who is also an actor. The pair pass their days drinking, jesting, and having affairs with women.

Malacia has a legendary curse that it can never progress or change, which is enforced by a powerful Supreme Council, which also eliminates heretics and other freethinkers. The craftsman Otto Bengtsohn, though, defies the anti-progress edicts and invents a type of early photography. Bengtsohn uses the camera to make slides of a play, which is funded by the powerful and wealthy Andrus Hoytola. De Chirolo falls in love with Hoytola's daughter, Armida, who is acting in the play. De Chirolo starts a secret love affair with the wealthy Armida, but she tells him they cannot marry unless he achieves enough in to make an acceptable mate.

Despite De Chirolo's professions of love to Armida, and their secret plan to marry, De Chirolo has sexual encounters with a number of women.

De Chirolo starts to fall in love, and decides to cease his womanizing. As De Chirolo works with the other participants in the play, he meets working-class apprentices who call for progress and changes in society, which is against the law in Malacia. As De Chirolo tries to rise in Malacian society, he feels frustrated at his lack of progress in being accepted by the nobles. When Andrus Hoytola invites de Chirolo to join the annual hunt for "ancestral animals" (rare examples of the almost-extinct dinosaurs), de Chirolo is pleased to mingle with nobles and slay a seven-ton Devil-Jaw. However, de Chirolo's rise in Malacian society unravels when Andrus Hoytola learns that Bengtsohn is a Progressive who hopes that his zahnoscope slides can be used to foment a revolution against the ruling class. As the elder Hoytola suspects that de Chirolo is in league with Bengtsohn, de Chirolo ends up banished from society and Bengtsohn is killed. As the story ends, Bengtsohn's fellow Progressives try to recruit de Chirolo to join their plans for a class revolution.