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Conversations in Bolzano (Paperback)

by Sandor Marai (Author) "It was at Mestre he stopped thinking; the dissolute friar, Balbi, had very nearly let the police get wind of him, because he had looked..." (more)
3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd (7 Jul 2005)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0141018399
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141018393
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 2.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 626,657 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Product Description

It is midnight, October 31st 1758 and Giacomo Casanova has escaped from a Venetian prison after sixteen months consigned to darkness and the underworld. Shaking off the enforced solitude, Casanova makes his way to Bolzano - the small village where he was dealt a cruel hand. A place full of memories, Bolzano was the scene of a moonlit duel fought with the Duke of Parma when Casanova and he were both in pursuit of the beguiling Francesca. The quest was lost and Casanova was left with three scars above his heart and one option: he could live, but only on the condition he never saw Francesca again. But now Casanova is back having secured a loan from an old friend, and is determined to win this time whilst the Duke has an offer Casanova simply cannot refuse and that just might spell his undoing.


About the Author

Sandor Marai was born in Kassa, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1900. He rose to fame as one of the leading literary novelists in Hungary in the 1930s. Profoundly anti-fascist, he survived the Second World War, but persecution by the Communists drove him away from the country in 1948, first to Italy and the to the United States. Marai committed suicide in San Diego in 1989, never knowing about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the restoration of democracy to Central Europe. He is the author of over twenty books. Conversations In Bolzano is the second to be translated into English.
Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
It was at Mestre he stopped thinking; the dissolute friar, Balbi, had very nearly let the police get wind of him, because he had looked for him in vain as the mail coach set off, and only found him after a diligent search, in a coffeehouse, where he was blithely sipping a cup of chocolate and flirting with the waitress. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews

5 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.4 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A work of art, 2 April 2006
By Didier (Ghent, Belgium) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   
In October 1756 Giacomo Casanova escapes, after an imprisonment of 16 months, from the cells of the ducal palace in Venice. As the author himselves states in his preface that's where the historical fact in his book ends.

Marai has not so much written about Casanova as about men and women and this thing between them often called love. Indeed, throughout the book characters are often identified as 'the man' or 'the woman', making it clear that this is about much more than what happened to these 3 particular people.

After his escape, Giacomo arrives in Bolzano and finds that it is the winter residence of the Duke of Parma and his wife Francesca. Years before Giacomo met both, and fought and lost a duel with the duke over Francesca...

The book consist largely of three monologues (Giacomo, the duke and Francesca) in which Marai superbly explores the nature of love, seduction and betrayal. It takes getting used to (who else still writes in monologues?), and there's very little action (all conversations take place in the room in the inn where Giacomo stays) but it is well worth the effort to persist! Marai has succeeded in writing a very insightful and beautiful book about the nature of relationships between men and women, one to read and re-read. I very rarely give 5 stars but didn't hesitate in this case.

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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Conversations? Monologues more likely., 31 Aug 2005
By Ralph Blumenau (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)   
Readers of Marai's masterpiece Embers (see my review) may expect lengthy, unrealistic, but totally gripping dialogues in this work also; but whereas that artifice worked very well in the other book, here it is for the most part tedious and repetitive. The central monologue, 60 pages long, is an almost uninterrupted one, with paragraphs of eight or eleven pages, and only the last monologue, which runs for some 37 pages, builds up a powerful momentum and develops a psychologically profound analysis of Casanova's personality - and perhaps of the personalities of other people who are afraid of committing themselves to truly loving relationships. I was several times tempted to abandon the book before I had reached this penultimate chapter. In the end I was glad I did not.
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1.0 out of 5 stars Monologues in Bolzano, 5 Jan 2009
I'd say "Monologues In Bolzano" is a better description for this tottering heap of cod-philosophy. There are some flashes of inspiration in here but not nearly enough to compensate for the inability of the content to support the long tracts of tedious repetition. So much of the book is paraphrasing that is seems as if Marai's intention was to exhaust Roget's Thesaurus as much as his readers. Only pride forced to me to finish the novel, but not without safely skipping over great swaths of turgid prose. The Duke`s monologue is especially tedious. This book says precisely nothing about real people or even symbols of real people.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Love is harmony
After his escape out of a Venetian prison, Giacomo Casanova, the main character in this novel (I highly recommend his `real' autobiography) arrives in Bolzano for a rest. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Luc REYNAERT

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow
The potential for a great story revolving around the life of Casanova has long existed, his own autobiography being very unsatisfying, despite a dirth of subject matter. Read more
Published on 15 Nov 2005 by Mr. F. I. Dudaniec

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