Travel Writing
Venetian Masters
Under the Skin of the City of Love
Author:
Price: £7.99
Dimensions: 129 x 198 mm
Number of pages: 320
ISBN: 9781840246346
Publication Date: 4th February 2008
Buy BookSynopsis
Very few people, Italians included, get to experience the real Venice. The sinking city has been mythologised in history, art, literature and music for centuries.
During two long, humid summers, Bidisha, explored the truth of the revered City of Love. She was guided through its intricate social conventions by her best friend’s family, as characterful and regal as anything Henry James could invent, who have been established in one of the most famous palazzi on the Canal Grande since making their fortune importing glass beads in the seventeenth century. While learning valuable lessons about ‘the Italian way’, Bidisha also glimpsed disturbing prejudices that exist close beneath the sophisticated surface.
Reviews
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The Independent on Sunday’s Holiday Hotlist, 20th July 2008
‘… she became absorbed into the intrigues and rituals of this notoriously secret city, learning to live, eat and socialise like the Venetians… A fascinating insider’s glimpse into a closed...
Independent on Sunday, 2nd March 2008
‘Not just an excellent new book by Bidisha, but also a meditation on that most haunting and evocative of places, La Serenissima: Venice’
‘Her journey through the winding back streets and glamorous cocktail soirées is intoxicating and satisfyingly full of insight.’
I found the book a fascinating in-depth account of this intriguing city. You really do feel that you've burrowed beneath the veneer of Venetian life. Some of the local attitudes...
‘this razor-sharp travelogue... explores not only the cultural life of the city but also its labyrinthine etiquette... there are a litany of comic episodes’
Asian Woman Book of the Month, July 2008
‘an engrossing read’
www.openmagazine.co.uk, February 2008
‘Original, succinct and powerful’
The bookseller 15 February 2008
‘A book that sets out to explore the “real” Venice, away from the mythology constructed around the sinking city’s history, art, literature and music’
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