Saturday, July 10, 2021

Eight top books on Venice

Orsola Casagrande is a Havana-based journalist and film-maker. As a journalist, she worked for 25 years for the Italian daily newspaper il manifesto, and is currently co-editor of the web magazine Global Rights.

She writes in Italian, English, Spanish and Turkish and also speaks Basque and Catalan. She writes regularly on Spanish, Catalan and Basque politics and culture, and has covered Turkey and Kurdistan as a special correspondent.

Casagrande is the editor of The Book of Venice, an anthology of contemporary city stories.

At Lit Hub she tagged eight books "on the enchanting, hopelessly beautiful splendor and history of Venice," including:
Donna Leon, By its Cover

A good way to get lost in Venice streets and campos is to read Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti series. Commissario Brunetti has accompanied readers inside Venice since
1992; as a Venetian, I have to say that reading this mystery series has inspired me, more than once, to both rediscover old places that I had not visited in years and find out that other old buildings have now been converted into one of the many hotels in the city. By its Cover sees Brunetti trying to solve the mystery of some rare books’ stolen pages.

This year, Leon published Transient Desires, the 30th Brunetti book. A book inevitably marked by the Covid pandemic which, the writer said, she has decided to treat “as a kind of folk memory and show how the memory lingers in thought, habit, behavior, but not write about the way the billions from Europe will be handled. Covid is better presented, in this time of uncertainty, as an ambiance, not a subject.”
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue