The Book of Venice

Casagrande, Orsola

£9.99

With its gondola-filled canals and beautiful architecture, the ‘floating city’ of Venice is unlike anywhere else in the world. It is a city where apparent opposites intersect; at once aquatic and terrestrial, past and present, East and West, spiritual and carnal, imaginary and real. It is this mystery and multiplicty that has long oiffered inspiration to writers and storytellers. This collection of short stories investigates the city, offering new perspectives on one of the world’s most coveted destinations.

Available on backorder

Publish Date: 08/12/2021

Description

An inspector rages against the announcement that police HQ is to relocate-the way so many of the city’s residents already have-to the mainland… An aspiring author struggles with the inexorable creep of rentalisation that has forced him to share his apartment, and life, with ‘global pilgrims’… An ageing painter rails against the liberties taken by tourists, but finds his anger undermined by his own childhood memories of the place… The Venice presented in these stories is a far cry from the ‘impossibly beautiful,’ frozen-in-time city so familiar to the thousands who flock there every year-a city about which, Henry James once wrote, ‘there is nothing new to be said.’ Instead, they represent the other Venice, the one tourists rarely see: the real, everyday city that Venetians have to live and work in. Rather than a city in stasis, we see it at a crossroads, fighting to regain its radical, working-class soul, regretting the policies that have seen it turn slowly into a theme park, and taking the pandemic as an opportunity to rethink what kind of city it wants to be.

Additional information

Weight 163 g
Dimensions 203 × 127 × 10 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

160

Language

English

Edition

Short stories

Dewey

853.010835845311 (edition:23)

Readership

Professional and scholarly / Code: H