Peter Ackroyd at his most magical and magisterial--a glittering,
evocative, fascinating, story-filled portrait of Venice, the
ultimate city.
The Venetians' language and way of thinking set them aside from
the rest of Italy. They are an island people, linked to the sea and
to the tides rather than the land. This lat-est work from the
incomparable Peter Ackroyd, like a magic gondola, transports its
readers to that sensual and surprising city.
His account embraces facts and romance, conjuring up the
atmosphere of the canals, bridges, and sunlit squares, the churches
and the markets, the festivals and the flowers. He leads us through
the history of the city, from the first refugees arriving in the
mists of the lagoon in the fourth century to the rise of a great
mercantile state and its trading empire, the wars against Napoleon,
and the tourist invasions of today. Everything is here: the
merchants on the Rialto and the Jews in the ghetto; the
glassblowers of Murano; the carnival masks and the sad colonies of
lepers; the artists--Bellini, Titian, Tintoretto, Tiepolo. And the
ever-present undertone of Venice's shadowy corners and dead ends,
of prisons and punishment, wars and sieges, scandals and
seductions.
Ackroyd's "Venice: Pure City "is a study of Venice much in the
vein of his lauded "London: The Biography." Like "London," "Venice
"is a fluid, writerly exploration organized around a num-ber of
themes. History and context are provided in each chap-ter, but
Ackroyd's portrait of Venice is a particularly novelistic one, both
beautiful and rapturous. We could have no better guide--reading
"Venice: Pure City "is, in itself, a glorious journey to the
ultimate city.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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