The romance of the physician Valentine and blind Julia provides the central thread of this engrossing novel, which brings alive the world of the Roman Empire at the time of Claudius II – a time when Christians were amongst those whose deaths provided public entertainment in the Flavian Amphitheatre and the Circus Maximus.
It is a novel with remarkable resonances, its ideas startlingly relevant to our own times: globalisation vs. fundamentalism, reason vs. superstition, civil law vs. personal freedom, the perverse gratifications of sex and violence, the subversion of virtue by wealth – and the power of passionate love to overcome all obstacles to its consummation.

Valentine is Chet Raymo's first novel since The Dork of Cork, which is still in print, was translated into fourteen languages and was filmed as Frankie Starlight (directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg). His acclaimed first novel, In the Falcon's Claw was also widely published in translation.