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The author of the record-breaking bestseller Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil unveils the enigmatic Venice as only he canIt was twelve years ago that Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil achieved a record-breaking four-year run on the New York Times bestseller list. John Berendt's inimitable brand of nonfiction brought the dark mystique of Savannah so startlingly to life for millions of people that tourism to Savannah increased by 46 percent. It is Berendt and only Berendt who can capture Venice—a city of masks, a city of riddles, where the narrow, meandering passageways form a giant maze, confounding all who have not grown up wandering into its depths.Venice, a city steeped in a thousand years of history, art and architecture, teeters in precarious balance between endurance and decay. Its architectural treasures crumble—foundations shift, marble ornaments fall—even as efforts to preserve them are underway. The City of Falling Angels opens on the evening of January 29, 1996, when a dramatic fire destroys the historic Fenice opera house. The loss of the Fenice, where five of Verdi's operas premiered, is a catastrophe for Venetians. Arriving in Venice three days after the fire, Berendt becomes a kind of detective—inquiring into the nature of life in this remarkable museum-city—while gradually revealing the truth about the fire.In the course of his investigations, Berendt introduces us to a rich cast of characters: a prominent Venetian poet whose shocking "suicide" prompts his skeptical friends to pursue a murder suspect on their own; the first family of American expatriates that loses possession of the family palace after four generations of ownership; an organization of high-society, partygoing Americans who raise money to preserve the art and architecture of Venice, while quarreling in public among themselves, questioning one another's motives and drawing startled Venetians into the fray; a contemporary Venetian surrealist painter and outrageous provocateur; the master glassblower of Venice; and numerous others-stool pigeons, scapegoats, hustlers, sleepwalkers, believers in Martians, the Plant Man, the Rat Man, and Henry James.Berendt tells a tale full of atmosphere and surprise as the stories build, one after the other, ultimately coming together to reveal a world as finely drawn as a still-life painting. The fire and its aftermath serve as a leitmotif that runs throughout, adding the elements of chaos, corruption, and crime and contributing to the ever-mounting suspense of this brilliant book.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
Teatro La Fenice, Social life and customs, Description and travel, Fire, 1996, Friends and associates, Archives, History, Nonfiction, Travel, Manners and customs, Friendship, Large type books, Venice (italy), description and travel, Venice (italy), social life and customsPlaces
Venice (Italy)Times
1996Showing 5 featured editions. View all 5 editions?
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The City of Falling Angels
2008, Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Electronic resource
in English
1436283515 9781436283519
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The city of falling angels
2005, Random House Large Print
in English
- 1st large print ed.
0375435387 9780375435386
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Book Details
Published in
New York, USA
Edition Notes
Map of Venice on endpapers.
Classifications
The Physical Object
ID Numbers
Excerpts
First paragraph, Prologue
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- Created April 1, 2008
- 22 revisions
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December 31, 2022 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
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