To know a city is to become intimately intertwined with its nooks, crevices, secret passageways and dark places where its lifeblood flows – and what city has more of those than Venice? In "The Other Venice", Predrag Matvejevic ventures past the infamous canals and cobblestone streets of the tourist’s Venice to find the heart of the historic Italian city.
A lyrical re-imagining of the City of Romance, "The Other Venice" utterly reconfigures the Venetian landscape, as Matvejevic follows both real and imaginary maps, contemporary and historical, to trace out the details of this sensuous city. He probes into what the ancient metropolis means to its people, the nation and global culture. But he also finds hints of life in the smallest and most mundane details – bridges, rust-flecked boats, wall sculptures, rivers and piazzas scattered throughout the city. Each has a little-known story and with Matvejevic as our guide, he reveals the stories behind them all.
The book carries readers to a Venice that has escaped the eyes of writers, artists and photographers through the centuries, and Matvejevic by turns plays a historian, cartographer, anthropologist and philologist as he unravels elusive artifacts of time past. Arresting black-and-white photographs by Sarah Quill accompany the text, offering a silent testament to Matvejevic’s pilgrimage. A fascinating and beautifully written guide, "The Other Venice" reminds us that there is always another mystery to uncover in the city of water and stone.
About author
Predrag Matvejevic was born in 1932 in Mostar from a Russian father and a Croatian mother. He teaches at the New Sorbonne, Paris and the Sapienza, Rome, and is also the author of "Mediterranean: A Cultural Landscape" (1999).
Reviews
"The Other Venice is a short book but one of the great books written both about the city and about the inspiration it has evoked down the centuries" – Liberation, Paris
