A New York Times NOTABLE BOK OF THE YEAR
An NPR BEST BOK OF THE YEAR
A Publishers Weekly BEST BOK OF THE YEAR
A globetrotting, time-bending, wildly entertaining masterpiece hailed by the New York Times Book Review as Audaciously well written . the book I was raving about to my friends before I'd even finished it. Set in three different eras, and in three different locations--all, coincidentally, named Venice--this startling, beautiful gem of a book (NPR) calls to mind David Mitchell and Umberto Eco in its mix of entertainment and literary bravado.
The core story is set in sixteenth-century Venice, where, on the island of Murano, the famed makers of Venetian glass were perfecting one of the old world's most wondrous inventions: the mirror. An object of glittering yet fearful fascination
--was it reflecting simple reality, or something more spiritually revealing?
--the Venetian mirrors were state-of-the-art technology, subject to industrial espionage by desirous sultans and royals world-wide. Thus, for the skilled craftsmen that made them, any attempt to leave the island--to steal the technology--was a crime punishable by death. One man, however
--a world-weary war hero with nothing to lose
--has a scheme he thinks will allow him to outwit the city's terrifying enforcers of the edict,
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A New York Times NOTABLE BOK OF THE YEAR
An NPR BEST BOK OF THE YEAR
A Publishers Weekly BEST BOK OF THE YEAR
A globetrotting, time-bending, wildly entertaining masterpiece hailed by the New York Times Book Review as Audaciously well written . the book I was raving about to my friends before I'd even finished it. Set in three different eras, and in three different locations--all, coincidentally, named Venice--this startling, beautiful gem of a book (NPR) calls to mind David Mitchell and Umberto Eco in its mix of entertainment and literary bravado.
The core story is set in sixteenth-century Venice, where, on the island of Murano, the famed makers of Venetian glass were perfecting one of the old world's most wondrous inventions: the mirror. An object of glittering yet fearful fascination
--was it reflecting simple reality, or something more spiritually revealing?
--the Venetian mirrors were state-of-the-art technology, subject to industrial espionage by desirous sultans and royals world-wide. Thus, for the skilled craftsmen that made them, any attempt to leave the island--to steal the technology--was a crime punishable by death. One man, however
--a world-weary war hero with nothing to lose
--has a scheme he thinks will allow him to outwit the city's terrifying enforcers of the edict, the ominous Council of Ten . . .
Meanwhile, in two other Venices
--Venice Beach, California, circa 1958, and the Venice casino in Las Vegas, circa today
--two other schemers launch similarly dangerous plans to get away with a secret . . .
All three stories weave together into a spell-binding tour de force that is impossible to put down
--an old-fashioned, stay-up-all-night novel that, in the end, returns the reader to a stunning conclusion in the original Venice . . . and the bedazzled sense of having read a truly original and thrilling work of art.
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