The Floating Book - Tapa blanda

A richly textured tale of love and learning, lust and superstition that is at turns heartwarming and heartbreaking, exhilarating and terrifying ... prose as luminous as a Venetian dawn' (Philadelphia Inquirer)

Opulent and ravishing - you find yourself thinking about the nature of obsession ... about witchcraft ... about Judaism, about the effects of the plague, prostitution, medicine ... hypocrisy, betrayal, loyalty and disgrace. In Short, fifteenth-century Venice slowly comes alive (Washington Post)

A stunning evocation of fifteenth-century Venice ... spine-tingling ... Has the power to transport (Independent)

Lovric thrusts out her story like a great bolt of ravishing, red Venetian velvet, the truths and fables in it woven smooth, the very texture of it breathtaking (Marlena de Blasi, author of A Thousand Days in Venice)

[Lovric] reveal[s] herself as a gifted and individual phrasemaker - always revealing, never anachronistic ... Add to this writing talent the many other virtues Lovric brings to The Floating Book - a command of her subject that is so intimate that it is almost indecent; a similarly intimate facility with Catullus's poetry, which she translates herself; her thorough and (more important) use of her prodigious research - and you can see how rewarding The Floating Book can be ... it is refreshing and heartening to read a book by a writer who is genuinely interested in words (Edward Docx Washington Post)

Meticulous historical detail and a splendid, complex story make this portrait of Venice and its denizens memorable and moving (Booklist)

An enthralling tale of love, obsession and religious fervour. Lovric's narrative, featuring many historical figures, convincingly recreates a fascinating time in history (Big Issue)

A lusty, atmospheric book, skilfully constructed (Historical Novels Review)

Lush, exotic and dripping with sensuality ... A fantastic novel of epic proportions (Good Book Guide)

Lovric spins an intrigue-laden tale of destructive lusts and mixed-up loves in the early days of the printing press. She has an eye for sensual detail, conveying the sights and smells of the city's markets and palazzo (Publisher's Weekly)

Venice, 1468. Sosia Simeon, a free-spirited sensualist, is the lover of many men in the fabled city, though married to one she despises. On the edge of the Grand Canal, Wendelin von Speyer sets up the first printing press in Venice and looks for the book that will make his fortune. When he tempts fate by publishing Catullus, the poet whose desperate and unrequited love inspired the most tender and erotic poems of antiquity, a scandal is set in motion that will change all their lives forever.