How many travelers, seduced by fictional narratives, have flown to exotic destinations only to discover how comically pedestrian and daunting life can be no matter where they go? Quixote, besotted as he was with tales of chivalry, was the first to do that-even if it took a bit longer, in his case, for disillusion to set in. Heartbreak, decay, lethal regret? Sign me up." Also nominated by: Francine Prose, Jennifer Belle (HarperPerennial, $13). "This small book is both a warning and a love letter to Venice and all who long to travel there. "Gray Venice in the high season, with its humid air and empty corridors, amplifies the story's meaning by a thousand," says David Ebershoff.
Tied for second place on our list of most-nominated books, this dark classic of pederast obsession resonates brilliantly with its setting. I greatly admire Thomas Mann, but it's the Venice of Dead Lagoon that I walk in my Italian dreams" (Vintage, $14). "A familiar place rendered strange and foreboding by the author's intimate familiarity with its streets-no gondolas for the pedestrian Zen. "Venice is a marvel," says Jonathan Raban.
#Lolita the lover duras series#
This is the fifth in Dibdin's Aurelio Zen mystery series but the first in which the investigator from Rome revisits his native town. Phillip Lopate says that his favorite Balzac novel, and what it has to say about life, are summarized in a single sentence from the book: "In the heart of Paris the close alliance between squalor and splendor…characterizes the queen of capitals." There's also Balzac's use of the courtesan, "the figure who threads her way through Paris and unites wealth and poverty by beauty." For this "cartographer of cities and societies," as Lopate calls him, the geography is just as important as the social intrigue (Oxford, $12). Thomas wrote, "A language you don't understand reminds you how vulnerable you are," and it's through her writing and our own journeys, says Julia Alvarez, that "we discover that it is precisely this vulnerability which connects us with one another-a good enough reason to travel if nothing else" (Soho, $12). This story collection is one of only three books by Thomas, who died in a 1989 plane crash en route to an Ethiopian refugee camp. Fernanda Eberstadt calls it "a shrewd, dispassionate portrait of nineteenth-century Corsica" (Kessinger, $21). In the lamentably obscure French writer's most accomplished novel, a jaded colonel and his daughter journey to Corsica in search of untouched paradise, only to become immersed in international intrigue, culture clash, and a still-thriving ancient tradition of the vendetta. is a shadowland-damp with fog, dark with night, and peopled with killers and cons" (Vintage, $14).
Auden called "the great wrong place" and which Phillip Lopate dubs "the city that didn't want to be a city." Lopate loves that, contrary to its bright reputation, Chandler's Los Angeles is "portrayed as a very occult, secretive place." "Don't expect sunshine and palm trees," seconds David Ebershoff. Michael Ondaatje calls this world "a thrilling, unforgettable universe, beautifully evoked, completely real and believable-a landscape where there are great adventures and love affairs and politics and wars" (Harvest, $14). Imagine John Cheever's swimmer traveling via tree instead of suburban pool-for his entire life-and you have Calvino's fairy tale of an eighteenth-century Italian boy who climbs a tree one day and never comes down.
0 kommentar(er)
