Every year for the 30 they have been married, Louis Begley and Anka Mulhstein spend long, enjoyable months in Venice. They write and live there and, over the decades, La Serenissima has become their second home.
The owners of their favourite restaurants have become their friends and they share the lives of the locals, far off the beaten tourist tracks, as Mulhstein describes so very charmingly in this book. Louis Begley tells the story of how he fell in love in and with Venice. He is not alone, as his brilliant literary essay on the city’s place in world literature demonstrates: Henry James, Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann are only some of his illustrious predecessors. Mulhstein and Begley’s Venice is a very private view of a place, which will forever inspire dreams of love and passion.

‘This is an unconventional introduction that captures the spirit both of La Serenissima and of what Thomas Mann called “the slightly foul odour of sea and swamp”. . . fresh insights both from the writers who are quoted and the authors themselves: and the novella is a gem.’
Andrew Taylor, Times Literary Supplement