Venetian Vespers A Novel

John Banville

eBook - 2025

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • IRISH BESTSELLER • A masterful, enthralling new novel from the Booker Prize winner “A stylish escapade that even Henry James might relish." —Wall Street JournalEverything was a puzzle, everything a trap set to mystify and hinder me. . . .1899. As the new century approaches, struggling English writer Evelyn Dolman—a hack, by his own description—marries Laura Rensselaer, daughter of an American oil tycoon. Evelyn anticipates that he and Laura will inherit a substantial fortune and lead a comfortable, settled life. But his hopes are dashed when a mysterious rift between Laura and her father, just before the patriarch’s death, leads to her disinheritance.The unhappy newlyweds travel to Venice t...o celebrate the New Year at the Palazzo Dioscuri, ancestral home of the charming but treacherous Count Barbarigo. From their first moments in the mist-blanketed... more