| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Venice: Pure City for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
`Ackroyd takes an erudite and entertaining look at the city of doges, gondolas, carnival masks and canals' --Marie Claire
`Combative, omnivorous and beady-eyed as ever' --The Spectator
'...Ackroyd is acute...' --The Sunday Times
"Highly evocative...he writes beautifully and succinctly". --Saturday Times
"Ackroyd's fans will love his vision of this glorious city" --Books Quarterly
"Ackroyd has managed... to give us a beautifully crafted, ruminative, well-illustrated, and utterly readable volume". --History Today
"opulent, shimmering prose" --The Times
'elegant and erudite' --Tatler
`Combative, omnivorous and beady-eyed as ever' --The Spectator
'...Ackroyd is acute...' --The Sunday Times
"Highly evocative...he writes beautifully and succinctly". --Saturday Times
"Ackroyd's fans will love his vision of this glorious city" --Books Quarterly
"Ackroyd has managed... to give us a beautifully crafted, ruminative, well-illustrated, and utterly readable volume". --History Today
"opulent, shimmering prose" --The Times
'elegant and erudite' --Tatler
Book Description
Peter Ackroyd at his most magical and magisterial - a glittering, evocative, fascinating, story-filled portrait of Venice: ultimate city.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
57 of 58 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Yes, this is magisterial, beautifully written - but, typically of Ackroyd, too many questionable sweeping assertions sometimes impede the flow of what should be a rollicking good read. For every "wow!" there is a corresponding "huh?" It can be argued this is what makes Ackroyd unique.
If you know and love Venice, you'll enjoy this. If you don't, it will pique your curiosity. And you might agree with Shakespeare's Holofernes: "Venetia, Venetia, chi non ti vede, non ti pretia!" (Venice - whoever doesn't see you, doesn't esteem you.)
Let's start with the "wow!" Wide-ranging, learned and instructive. As with his London: The Biography, Ackroyd dives headfirst into the water surrounding Venice's 117 islands, fishing for primal origins and finding it an elemental metaphor for the city. Chapter 2, "City of St Mark," deals with the refugees who settled there. Then comes the golden age of state power, commerce and trade. This also embraces the merchants of the Rialto and the Jews in the Ghetto.
By Chapter 6, Ackroyd is back in rhapsodic mode, with "Timeless City," including ruminations on the bells. The next section, "Living City," humanises the city, with fascinating subsections on Body and Buildings; Learning and Language; Colour and Light (fabulous work with the artists including Bellini, Tintoretto and Titan); and Pilgrims and Tourists. Then Ackroyd moves on to carnival and carnal aspects, including the "Eternal Feminine" (virgin and whore). Similarly, Sacred City considers heavenly and hellish aspects - which seem to win out in "Shadows of History" with its Death in Venice theme.
And now for the "huh?" factor. There's a lingering suspicion about some of the connections: is the mirror-like surface of the Lagoon like glass, which, conveniently made in Murano, stands as a metaphor for the City? Does Venetian satin, conveniently called watered silk, like the watery and "undulating" floor of St Mark's, echo the water surrounding the whole city? Are the pinky green stones of the buildings the colours of flesh and bone, thus personifying the entire urban building fabric? And is watery Venice a place of "liminal fantasies of death and rebirth?"
Some will be inspired, others irritated. But there's no denying Ackroyd's learning, creativity, gusto and grace.
If you know and love Venice, you'll enjoy this. If you don't, it will pique your curiosity. And you might agree with Shakespeare's Holofernes: "Venetia, Venetia, chi non ti vede, non ti pretia!" (Venice - whoever doesn't see you, doesn't esteem you.)
Let's start with the "wow!" Wide-ranging, learned and instructive. As with his London: The Biography, Ackroyd dives headfirst into the water surrounding Venice's 117 islands, fishing for primal origins and finding it an elemental metaphor for the city. Chapter 2, "City of St Mark," deals with the refugees who settled there. Then comes the golden age of state power, commerce and trade. This also embraces the merchants of the Rialto and the Jews in the Ghetto.
By Chapter 6, Ackroyd is back in rhapsodic mode, with "Timeless City," including ruminations on the bells. The next section, "Living City," humanises the city, with fascinating subsections on Body and Buildings; Learning and Language; Colour and Light (fabulous work with the artists including Bellini, Tintoretto and Titan); and Pilgrims and Tourists. Then Ackroyd moves on to carnival and carnal aspects, including the "Eternal Feminine" (virgin and whore). Similarly, Sacred City considers heavenly and hellish aspects - which seem to win out in "Shadows of History" with its Death in Venice theme.
And now for the "huh?" factor. There's a lingering suspicion about some of the connections: is the mirror-like surface of the Lagoon like glass, which, conveniently made in Murano, stands as a metaphor for the City? Does Venetian satin, conveniently called watered silk, like the watery and "undulating" floor of St Mark's, echo the water surrounding the whole city? Are the pinky green stones of the buildings the colours of flesh and bone, thus personifying the entire urban building fabric? And is watery Venice a place of "liminal fantasies of death and rebirth?"
Some will be inspired, others irritated. But there's no denying Ackroyd's learning, creativity, gusto and grace.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As a Venetian living in London, I have picked up this book out of nostalgia...and because all books (written in Italian) about Venice I have ever read were essentially aimed to display the knowledge of the author! What Peter Akroyd does in this book, is to organise the content in themes, making historic fact more "digestible" for the reader, because everything follows a logic path. Dates bore me to death, so for me, this way of getting information really works. This is, even if founded on solid historic background, quite an emotive book, that makes you see how this amazing city evolved and giving a sense of what life in the city must have been throughout centuries. Only somebody with a huge sensibility and intelligence could have written so delicately, capturing all nuances of my hometown. On quite a few passages, I almost felt I was there, hundreds of years ago, walking inside that "big mosque" that is the Basilica. Absolutely unmissable.
30 of 34 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I am a great admirer of the work of Peter Ackroyd. Ever since I read `Hawksmoor`
I have sought out all I can of his writing whether it be fiction or non-fiction. I was therefore looking forward to his most recent publication `Venice`. Sadly I can only say I was disappointed.
Perhaps Peter Ackroyd is best known for his numerous books about London. This would be understandable since each of them is outstanding in its own right, together they are a monument to one man`s love and appreciation of one of the greatest cities of the world. Unfortunately the samew cannot be said for `Venice`. Perhaps my expectations were set too high. I read the book looking for the spark to ignite the narrative-it did not happen. Throughout I could not help thinking the author`s heart was not in the writing nor, more surprisingly, the city.
In fairness, the fault could be all mine because I had recently re-read Jan Morris`s book of the same name. Reading Morris`s book had been a pleasure from start to finish simply because the author made me feel the same way about the city. This never happened with Peter Ackroyd`s book. Too often I felt the latter book had been written to a formula. The layout of the chapters are similar to those of Morris`s book. Was this accidental or deliberate?
I admit this is a partial view and I do not really want to dissuade anyone from reading Peter Ackroyd. All I would really suggest is that if you are a newcomer to Peter Ackroy`s work choose another of his books and if you want a book about Venice read the one by Jan Morris
I have sought out all I can of his writing whether it be fiction or non-fiction. I was therefore looking forward to his most recent publication `Venice`. Sadly I can only say I was disappointed.
Perhaps Peter Ackroyd is best known for his numerous books about London. This would be understandable since each of them is outstanding in its own right, together they are a monument to one man`s love and appreciation of one of the greatest cities of the world. Unfortunately the samew cannot be said for `Venice`. Perhaps my expectations were set too high. I read the book looking for the spark to ignite the narrative-it did not happen. Throughout I could not help thinking the author`s heart was not in the writing nor, more surprisingly, the city.
In fairness, the fault could be all mine because I had recently re-read Jan Morris`s book of the same name. Reading Morris`s book had been a pleasure from start to finish simply because the author made me feel the same way about the city. This never happened with Peter Ackroyd`s book. Too often I felt the latter book had been written to a formula. The layout of the chapters are similar to those of Morris`s book. Was this accidental or deliberate?
I admit this is a partial view and I do not really want to dissuade anyone from reading Peter Ackroyd. All I would really suggest is that if you are a newcomer to Peter Ackroy`s work choose another of his books and if you want a book about Venice read the one by Jan Morris
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Padded Repetitive Musings in Search of a Firm Editor
I am a fan of Ackroyd's and was looking forward to this book as a bit of a tangential take on the general history/travelguide book of Venice. Read more
Published 8 months ago by J. A. Holdsworth
Difficult
Ackroyd's writing tends to be a matter of love or hate judging by these reviews. What some might call descriptive, evocative eloquence others will find flowery, long-winded and... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Mikio
excess to requirements
What a pity Peter Ackroyd doesn't have anything interesting or original to say about Venice. This book comprises a series of seemingly unrelated and unsubstantiated assertions,... Read more
Published 10 months ago by moby-dick
bricks disguised by marble
I was really keen to read a popular account of the history of Venice, but this one, I'm afraid, doesn't work for me. Read more
Published 15 months ago by Michael Gross
Not bad but...
Coming as is does with an attached TV series, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Peter Ackroyd is here merely 'doing a Da Mosto' and starting to read the book does little to... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Jeff Cotton
Wonderful Venice
Having just returned from another holiday in Venice I was delighted to see a book from Peter Ackroyd. Read more
Published 19 months ago by BlueBoy
Sumptuous Serenissima
I have just started reading this book by the excellent Peter Ackroyd and have found it un-put-downable... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Ginger Kate
Fair, but lacking a sense of the passage of time
Not a bad overall read, this book captures many of the aspects of a unique city, arranging them thematically. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Jeremy
Flowery
I may be bucking the trend here but I just find Peter Ackroyd's writing impenetrable. I love nothing more than a dense history but I found London almost impossible to get into... Read more
Published 22 months ago by FYRG
echoes of la serinissima
There have been many books written about Venice which have entranced readers who have wished to learn about this unique and entrancing city; its long glorious and majestic history... Read more
Published on 21 Nov 2009 by Ronaldjgibson
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192198663_.gif){kind=small}
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Biography > Historical > Countries & Regions > Italy
- Books > History
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
