Italo Calvino ,
Invisible
Cities (Minerva;
Harcourt, Brace).
Characteristically
subtle variations on the
idea of the City,
presented in the form of
tales told by Marco Polo
to Kublai Khan. No
explicit reference to
Venice until well past
halfway, when Polo
remarks -"Every
time I describe a city I
am saying something
about Venice."
James Cowans ,
A Mapmaker's Dream
(Sceptre; Warner).
Engaging
historical-philosophical
fantasy based on the
creation of Fra Mauro's
famous map of the world,
one of the great
exhibits in the Libreria
Sansoviniana.
Michael Dibdin
, Dead Lagoon
(Faber; Vintage).
Superior detective story
starring Venice-born
Aurelio Zen, a cop
entangled in the
political maze of 1990s
Italy.
Ernest Hemingway
, Across the River
and into the Trees
(Arrow; Scribner).
Hemingway at his most
square-jawed and most
mannered: our hero
fights good, drinks
good, loves good, and
could shoot a duck out
of the skies from the
hip at a range of half a
mile. Target of one of
the funniest parodies
ever written: E.B.
White's Across the
Street and into the
Grill - "'I
love you," he said,
"and we are going
to lunch together for
the first and only time,
and I love you very
much."'
E.T.A. Hoffmann
, Doge and Dogaressa
(in Tales of Hoffmann
, Penguin). Fanciful
reconstruction of events
surrounding the treason
of Marin Falier, by one
of the pivotal figures
of German Romanticism.
Lots of passion and
pathos, narrated at
headlong pace.
Hugo von
Hofmannsthal , Andreas
(Pushkin Press; Turtle
Point Press). The last
novel by a writer
nowadays best known for
his collaborations with
the composer Richard
Strauss. An interesting
example of the use of
Venice as a metaphor for
moral decay, it charts
the corruption of a naïve
Viennese aristocrat in
the slippery city - or,
rather, it would have
done, had Hofmannsthal
finished it. As it is,
most of the text
consists of notes, which
makes it something of an
esoteric pleasure.
Henry James , The
Aspern Papers & The
Wings of the Dove
(both Penguin). The
first, a 100-page tale
about a biographer's
manipulative attempts to
get at the personal
papers of a deceased
writer, is one of
James's most tautly
constructed longer
stories. The latter, one
of the three vast and
circumspect late novels,
was likened to caviar by
Ezra Pound, and is
likely to put you off
James for life if you
come to it without
acclimatizing yourself
with the earlier stuff.
Donna Leon , Acqua
Alta (Pan; Harper
o/p). Liberally laced
with an insider's
observations on daily
life in Venice, this is
the most atmospheric of
Leon's long sequence of
highly competent
Venice-set detective
novels.
Thomas Mann , Death
in Venice (Minerva;
Penguin). Profound study
of the demands of art
and the claims of the
flesh, with the city
itself thematically
significant rather than
a mere exotic backdrop.
Richer than most stories
five times its length
and infinitely more
complex than Visconti's
sentimentalizing film.
Ian McEwan , The
Comfort of Strangers
(Vintage). A modern
Gothic yarn in which an
ordinary young English
couple fall foul of a
sexually ambiguous
predator. Venice is
never named as the
locality, but is evoked
with some subtlety and
menace.
Caryl Phillips,
The Nature of Blood
(Faber; Vintage).
Principally set during
the Holocaust, this
exploration of
persecution and
alienation interweaves
the twentieth century
with re-creations of
sixteenth-century
Venetian society,
particularly the Ghetto.
Marcel Proust
, Albertine Disparue
. The Venetian
interlude, occurring in
the penultimate novel of
Proust's massive novel
sequence, can be sampled
in isolation for its
acute dissection of the
sensory experience of
the city - but to get
the most from it, you've
got to knuckle down and
commit yourself to the
preceding ten volumes of
À la Recherche .
The best English
translation is D.J.
Enright's revision of
the pioneering Kilmartin/Scott-Moncrieff
version, published in
six paperback volumes
(Vintage; Modern
Library).
William Rivière
, A Venetian Theory
of Heaven (Sceptre
in UK). Pleasant,
undemanding story of
marital woes and
emotional confusion,
with expertly evoked
Venetian setting.
Frederick Rolfe
(Baron Corvo), The
Desire and Pursuit of
the Whole (Da Capo,
o/p). A transparent
exercise in
self-justification, much
of it taken up with
venomous ridicule of the
English community in
Venice, among whom Rolfe
moved while writing the
book in 1909. (Its
libellous streak kept it
unpublished for 25
years.) Snobbish and
incoherent, redeemed by
hilarious
character-assassinations
and gorgeous descriptive
passages. One of the few
books by an Anglophone
to be saturated with a
knowledge of the place.
Unfortunately, the Da
Capo paperback is
currently out of print,
leaving a very expensive
hardback as the only one
in the catalogue.
Arthur Schnitzler
, Casanova's Return
to Venice (Pushkin
Press in UK). Something
of a Schnitzler revival
followed the release of
Kubrick's Eyes Wide
Shut , which was
adapted from a novella
by this contemporary and
compatriot of Freud.
This similarly short and
intense book also
explores the dynamics of
desire, but from the
perspective of a
desperate man who is
rapidly approaching the
end of his life.
Michel Tournier
, Gemini (Johns
Hopkins). Venice is just
one of the localities
through which the
identical twins Jean and
Paul (known to their
parents as Jean-Paul)
are taken in this
amazingly inventive
exploration of the
concept of twinship. It
might be flashy in
places, yet Tournier
throws away more ideas
in the course of a novel
than most writers dream
up in a lifetime.
Barry Unsworth
, Stone Virgin
(Penguin; Norton). Yet
another story of the
uncanny repetitions of
history - this time an
English expert in stone
conservation begins to
suspect that his
emotional entanglement
with a sculptor's wife
is a recapitulation of a
past liaison. The
gobbets of scholarly
detail sit uncomfortably
alongside the melodrama
of the plot.
Salley Vickers
, Miss Garnet's Angel
(HarperCollins/Carroll
& Graf). Desiccated
spinster (a Marxist as
well, to make matters
worse) is awakened by
Venice to the finer
things in life - a
somewhat hackneyed tale,
but Vickers has a sound
knowledge of the city
and its art, and
displays a light touch
in her recreation of the
place.
Jeanette Winterson
, The Passion
(Vintage; Grove).
Whimsical little tale of
the intertwined lives of
a member of Napoleon's
catering corps and a
female gondolier.
Acclaimed as a
masterpiece in some
quarters.
