Enter the 14th century on an Italian island near Venice, a world where superstition reigns--where a corpse with black welts has just washed ashore. This astonishing debut from a born storyteller relates a timeless and universal tale of love, revenge, and man's never-ending struggle with nature.
SKU
9780446517904
Size
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Details
Authors:Golding, Michael
Copyright:1994
Format:Hardcover
GTIN13:9780446517904
ISBN10:0446517909
Page Count:320
Dimensions:5.3x1.06x7.82
Publisher:Grand Central Publishing
Jacket Notes:With an original, captivating new voice in American literature, Michael Golding brings us a narrative iridescent with the colors and textures of medieval Italy. Steeped in mystical lore and magical realism, Simple Prayers creates a world we know all too well...a world where nature has been thrown off balance and where the passions and pleasures of daily life may prove fatal. Enter the fourteenth century on an Italian island in the Venice lagoon, a world where superstition reigns, where life and death are created by magical equations, where the land holds simple truths. A corpse with black welts washes up on this rustic island's quiet shores, foreshadowing great change among the villagers who are at once larger than life and more real than the neighbors next door. Here is Albertino, a simple fruit and vegetable vendor whose only luxuries are the cherished ornate boxes he collects. Here is Ermenegilda, the spoiled, obese daughter of the island's only wealthy family, who makes Albertino the unlikely object of her love. Here is Miriam, the exquisite stranger with a secret, who steals hearts of two young men. Here, too, is the ethereal young girl with the power to heal everything but the cruel heart of her own mother. These and the other villagers of Riva di Pignoli create a mesmerizing world of hope and desire even as the specter of the corpse looms from the shadows on the shore. As no one is immune to the change that suddenly permeates the island, no reader will be immune to the transcendent beauty of this magnificent novel.
Strand Notes
On an island in the Venice lagoon in the 14th century a corpse washes ashore foreshadowing great changes. 304p.
Description
In his debut novel, Golding makes sense of the current AIDS crisis as he envisions another time and place transformed by a fatal horror. Take a journey back six centuries to a secluded island in the Venice lagoon--a wondrous place where superstition reigns and life and death are created by magical equations.