It is one of the most anticipated publishing events of the year. Come end-September, and John Berendt, phenomenally bestselling author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, will present his new book. City of Falling Angels is an exquisite inquiry into Venice, the city’s capacity to attract and to reveal character, her own and of those who seek to make a home there. Berendt anchors his study in the fire that destroyed the Fenice theatre.In 1996 the opera map of Italy was dramatically altered with that fire. Berendt inquires into the forensic and political dimensions of that catastrophe, and its effect on some very remarkable Venetians. He also meets men and women who have found their selves in the city, gathering in his narrative the intriguing battle for Ezra Pound’s legacy, the changing gastronomic profile of the city sought by the Rat Man of Treviso, and the altered demography in the palazzos on the Grand Canal. In the process Venice also becomes afilter through which to examine the extremes of human nature.Long years ago Mary McCarthy said that nothing new was left to be said of Venice. That itself framed her enduring profile. Berendt, it can be said with some certainty, will be counted among the city’s foremost chroniclers along with McCarthy, John Ruskin, Henry James and Jan Morris.
