Bøger af Andrea di Robilant

The remarkable story of Hemingway's love affair with both the city of Venice and the muse he found there - a young Italian girl who inspired him to complete his great final work.

"In the autumn of 1550, a thick volume containing a wealth of new geographical information, with startling wood-cut maps of Africa, India and Indonesia, was published in Venice under the title Navigationi & Viaggi (Journeys & Navigations). The person who had edited this remarkable collection of travelogues, journals, and classified government reports was unknown. Two more volumes delivered the most accurate information on Asia and the "New" World that was available. The three volumes together constituted an unparalleled release of geographical data into the public domain. It was, Andrea di Robilant writes, the biggest Wikileak of the Renaissance. In Orb, di Robilant brings to life the palace intrigues, editorial wheedling, delicate alliances, and vibrant curiosity that resulted in this coup by the editor G. B. Ramusio. Learned and self-effacing, he gathered a diverse array of both popular and closely guarded narratives-from the journals of Marco Polo (he fact-checked them!) to detailed reports on Northern African cultures from Hasan ibn Mohammad al-Wazzan of Andalusia; diverse voices spill out from these chapters as di Robilant recounts how Ramusio pursued them, and how he understood both the darker episodes of "exploration," which included colonial violence, and the voices of people from African and Asian lands, who had a great deal to share about their cultures. The result is a far-flung and delightful homage to one of the founding fathers of book publishing"--

In the waning days of Venice's glory in the mid-1700s, Andrea Memmo was scion to one the city's oldest patrician families. At the age of twenty-four he fell passionately in love with sixteen-year-old Giustiniana Wynne, the beautiful, illegitimate daughter of a Venetian mother and British father. Because of their dramatically different positions in society, they could not marry. And Giustiniana's mother, afraid that an affair would ruin her daughter's chances to form a more suitable union, forbade them to see each other. Her prohibition only fueled their desire and so began their torrid, secret seven-year-affair, enlisting the aid of a few intimates and servants (willing to risk their own positions) to shuttle love letters back and forth and to help facilitate their clandestine meetings. Eventually, Giustiniana found herself pregnant and she turned for help to the infamous Casanova-himself infatuated with her. Two and half centuries later, the unbelievable story of this star-crossed couple is told in a breathtaking narrative, re-created in part from the passionate, clandestine letters Andrea and Giustiniana wrote to each other.

The true story of forbidden love in eighteenth-century Venice between an Italian noble and the brilliant, illegitimate daughter of an English baronet.In 1754 Andrea Memmo, the dashing and gifted scion of a distinguished catholic family, fell in love with illegitimate English beauty, Giustiniana Wynne. This match went against every convention of their day; it was an 'impossible love'.The lovers chased each other through peeling palazzos, ballrooms, salons, theatres and gambling dens, rubbing shoulders with legendary figures such as Canaletto and their friend, Casanova. Increasingly desperate, they decided Giustiniana should marry to conceal their relationship. A summer passed in flirting with the English Consul, Joseph Smith, but he soon saw through the deception and the affair became public.The consequences were disastrous. Casanova was imprisoned for his 'pernicious' influence. Disgraced, Giustiniana left for Paris, where she launched herself into society in the hunt for a new husband. Her love for Memmo had lingering consequences that were to break this match, and she left again for London, hoping to build a new life, but a different fate lay in store...Andrea di Robilant is Andrea Memmo's great great great grandson. The idea to write A Venetian Affair was planted when his father discovered Andrea's letters to Giustiniana mouldering in the attic of the family's crumbling Venetian palazzo. His father's violent murder inspired di Robilant to fulfil his father's dream to write about the lovers, and this fascinating, romantic tale is the result of di Robilant's dedication and passion.Note that it has not been possible to include the same picture content that appeared in the original print version.

In the fall of 1948, Ernest Hemingway and his fourth wife traveled for the first time to Venice, which Hemingway called ';absolutely god-damned wonderful.' A year shy of his fiftieth birthday, Hemingway hadn't published a novel in nearly a decade when he met and fell in love with Adriana Ivancich, a striking Venetian girl just out of finishing school. Here Andrea di Robilant re-creates with sparkling clarity this surprising, years-long relationship, during which Adriana inspired a man thirty years her senior to complete his great final work. Hemingway used Adriana as the model for Renata in Across the River and into the Trees, and continued to visit Venice to see her; when the Ivanciches traveled to Cuba, Adriana was there as he wrote The Old Man and the Sea. The illuminating story of writer and musewhich also examines the cost to a young woman of her association with a larger-than-life literary celebrityAutumn in Venice is an intimate look at Hemingway's final years.

In 1797, Lucia, a beautiful statesman's daughter was married off to a powerful Venetian, only to be caught up in the turbulence of Napoleon's march. This is her story, from dazzling young hostess in Habsburg Vienna, lady-in-waiting at the court of Prince Eugene de Beauharnais in Milan, single mother in Paris during the fall of Napoleon's Empire to Byron's hard-fisted landlady during the poet's stay in Venice.

In the 1380s and 90s, Nicolo and Antonio Zen journeyed from Venice up the North Atlantic, encountering warrior princes, fighting savage natives and, just possibly, reaching the New World a full century before Columbus.