The City of Falling Angels

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources:  –  ·  ·  · scholar · JSTOR (February 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

The City of Falling Angels

Author	John Berendt
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Nonfiction
Publisher	Penguin Press
Publication date	2005
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	1-59420-058-0
Preceded by	Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

The City of Falling Angels (2005) is a non-fiction work by John Berendt. The book tells the story of some interesting inhabitants of Venice, Italy, whom the author met while living there in the months following a fire which destroyed the historic La Fenice opera house in 1996.

Synopsis[]

The book explores local reactions to the fire, from the American "Save Venice" Foundation to Venice's bureaucratic government. The opera house burned again while the second renovation was ongoing.

Among those interviewed is Archimede Seguso, a renowned Venetian glassblower of the twentieth century. Seguso lived directly behind La Fenice and witnessed the fire. Soon afterwards he created glassworks dedicated to the memory of the fire, in his own rendition of how the opera house burned.

The book also tells the story of many American and English expatriates who went to live in Venice, from Daniel Curtis, who owned Palazzo Barbaro where Henry James and John Singer Sargent were guests, to the poet Ezra Pound, who lived the last part of his life in Venice with his long-time mistress Olga Rudge.

Reception[]

Upon this book's release on September 27, 2005, it entered Amazon.com's Top Ten Bestsellers list and was number one on the New York Times Best Seller list.^{[citation needed]}

According to Kirkus Reviews, "Berendt does great justice to an exalted city that has rightly fascinated the likes of Henry James, Robert Browning, and many filmmakers throughout the world."^[1]

References[]

External links[]

• Penguin Reading Guides

This article about a non-fiction book on Italian history is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

• v
• t