The Book of Venice
A City in Short Fiction
Edited by Orsola Casagrande
Featuring: Elisabetta Baldisserotto, Gianfranco Bettin, Annalisa Bruni, Michele Catozzi, Cristiano Dorigo, Roberto Ferrucci, Ginevra Lamberti, Samantha Lenarda, Marilia Mazzeo & Enrico Palandri
Format: Paperback
Book type: Anthology
ISBN-13: 9781910974094
Published: 20 May 2021
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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.
Translated by Orsola Casagrande and Caterina Dell'Olivo.
Press
"The Book of Venice is a welcome eruption of incandescent working-class voices" - Morning Star
"The curated stories in this book are a wonderful way to really get under the skin of the city... this is a must-read collection" - Trip Fiction
"Reading The Book of Venice was like yet another trip to the floating city, so desired, so pined for... evocative, striking and well written" - Euro Lit Network
"There is an elegant rhythm to the stories in The Book of Venice." - ytali
Read 'On the Enchanting, Hopelessly Beautiful Splendor and History of Venice' by Orsola Casagrande, a recommended reading list on the city, for Lithub.
As featured in Eric Karl Anderson's June Book Haul.
Read interviews with Orsola Casagrande, Enrico Palandri, Samantha Lenarda, Ginevra Lamberti and Michele Catozzi about their relationship with Venice at The State of the Arts.
Read 'Lagoon' by Roberto Ferrucci at Bookanista for a taste of the collection.
Read 'Beautiful Venice' by Gianfranco Bettin at Morning Star for a taste of the collection.
Watch the launch of The Book of Venice for free on our YouTube channel.
Watch editor and co-translator Orsola Casagrande read an excerpt from the collection on the Translators Aloud YouTube channel.
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