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The Birth of Venus

By Sarah Dunant

(65)

| Hardcover | 9780316725491

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Book Description

Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoContinue

Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities.

But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra’s parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught between the Medici state, with its love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, and the hellfire preaching and increasing violence of Savonarola’s reactionary followers. Played out against this turbulent backdrop, Alessandra’s married life is a misery, except for the surprising freedom it allows her to pursue her powerful attraction to the young painter and his art.

The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain’s most innovative writers of literary suspense. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion, and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a heroine with the same vibrancy of spirit as her beloved city.

Critics

  • A brush with destiny

    The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant Little, Brown £12.99, pp320 As soon as I finished this book I wanted to go straight back and read it all over again. Alessandra, the novel's precocious and charismatic narrator made such wonderful company. Add to th ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • Savonarola's women

    The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant 412pp, Little, Brown, £12.99 Genre writing has provided fertile ground for feminist fiction. Detective stories, thrillers and historical novels have been pressed into service to explore gender-based issues of psycho ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

6 Reviews

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  • If you are at all interested in historical fiction, you will love this book. Definitely a love story, but a convoluted and unexpected one. Beautifully written and captivating throughout.

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    Sarabear135 said on Feb 25, 2010 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • As a fan of historical fiction and a lover of art history, I truly enjoyed this book.
    Strong characters & an engaging story made it a real pleasure to read!

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    Nini said on Jan 16, 2010 | Add your feedback

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9780316725491 Hardcover $20.91 -- The Book Depository
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