Venice for Lovers » (Unabridged)

Born in Poland in 1933, Louis Begley is the author of many novels, including Wartime Lies, About Schmidt and Shipwreck. His wife of thirty years, biographer Anka Muhlstein is the author of La Salle: Explorer of the North American Frontier and, most recently, A Taste for Freedom: The Life of Astolphe de Custine. They live in New York.

Venice for Lovers is a memorable collaboration by two fine stylists who have fashioned their own personal homages to Venice, one with a novella, the other with a personal essay. Every year for all the thirty they have been married, Begley and Muhlstein have escaped to Venice to write. In her contribution to the book, Muhlstein charmingly describes how she and her husband dine at the same restaurant every night for years on end, and how becoming friends with restaurateurs has been an unsurpassed means of getting to know the city and its inhabitants, far from the tourists in San Marco Square. In his short novella, Begley writes a story of falling in love with—and in—Venice. His twenty-year-old protagonist, enamored with an older, far worldlier woman of twenty-seven, is lured by her to the City of Water, only to be unceremoniously dumped and left to fend for himself after a brief rendezvous. But he discovers a lasting love for Venice itself—not an uncommon romance, as Begley’s brilliant literary essay on the city’s place within world literature demonstrates: Henry James, Marcel Proust, and Thomas Mann were all illustrious predecessors.

The Washington Post - Mindy Aloff

Both writers are exemplars of the windowpane school of prose: We are able to visualize their subjects as soon as we take in their sentences.