Anka Muhlstein - Böcker

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.

'Tell me where you eat, what you eat, and at what time you eat, and I will tell you who you are'. This is the motto of Anka Muhlstein's erudite and witty book about the ways food and the art of the table feature in Honore de Balzac's writings. It is not a coincidence that Balzac was the first in French literature to tackle this appetizing topic. Before the French Revolution, a traveller in France was apt to find local food scarce, tasteless, and of doubtful appearance. Restaurants did not even exist! Just as the art of the table became a centrepiece of French mores, Balzac used it as a connecting thread in his novels, showing how food can evoke character, atmosphere, class, and social climbing. Full of surprise and insights, "Balzac's Omelette" invites you to taste a new French literature and cuisine.

Each year of their 30-year marriage, Louis Begley, the award-winning author of Wartime Lies, and his wife Anka Muhlstein have spent long, enjoyable months in Venice. They write and live there and over the decades La Serenissima has become their second home. The owners of their favourite restaurants have become their friends and they share the lives of the locals, far off the welltrodden tourist track. Begley tells the story of how he fell in love with and in Venice, though as he makes clear when writing on Venice's pivitol role in world literature, he was not the only one - Henry James, Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann are only three of his most illustrious predecessors.