The Book of Venice: A City in Short Fiction (Reading the City)

An inspector rages against the announcement that police HQ is to relocate—the way so many of the city’s residents already have—to the mainland... An aspiring author struggles with the inexorable creep of rentalisation that has forced him to share his apartment, and life, with ‘global pilgrims’... An ageing painter rails against the liberties taken by tourists, but finds his anger undermined by his own childhood memories of the place... The Venice presented in these stories is a far cry from the ‘impossibly beautiful,’ frozen-in-time city so familiar to the thousands who flock there every year—a city about which, Henry James once wrote, ‘there is nothing new to be said.’ Instead, they represent the other Venice, the one tourists rarely see: the real, everyday city that Venetians have to live and work in. Rather than a city in stasis, we see it at a crossroads, fighting to regain its radical, working-class soul, regretting the policies that have seen it turn slowly into a theme park, and taking the pandemic as an opportunity to rethink what kind of city it wants to be.

Gianfranco Bettin (born in Venice, 1955) is an Italian sociologist and long-time leader of the Greens in Veneto. During his long political career, he was deputy mayor of Venice for Mestre and member of the Regional Council of Veneto. Marilia Mazzeowas born in Ravenna, but has lived in Venice for many years. After studying architecture he decided to change course and devote himself to writing. He has published the collection Acqua alta (Theoria 1997), the novels Paris of the suburbs (EL 1998) and The ballad of the invisible (Frassinelli 1999) and a series of short stories, some translated into English, German and French, for anthologies, newspapers and magazines. Elisabetta Baldisserotto is a psychoanalyst and writer, who lives and works in Venice. In the non-fiction field, in addition to numerous articles in specialized magazines, he has published the monographs Read the feelings. A psychological and literary journey (Moretti & Vitali, 2011) and Figures of passion. Between psychoanalysis and literature (Vivarium, 2014). IAs for fiction, she has published the short stories A casa in M'ama? Mothers, mothers, stepmothers or not (edited by A. Bruni, S. Chemotti, A. Cilento, Il Poligrafo, 2008) and A human case in Ten small ignoble stories (edited by B. Gr Annalisa Bruni is a Venetian writer. She has published four collections of short stories: Storie di libridine (Edizioni della laguna, 2002, finalist at the 2003 Settembrini-Regione Veneto Prize), Other imbalances (Helvetia Edizioni, 2005), Della fortuna womannesca (Nova Charta, 2008), Tipi not to be frequented (Cleup, 2013). She has edited numerous anthologies of short stories, including, in 2008, M'ama. Mothers, mothers, stepmothers or not, with A. Cilento and S. Chemotti, for Il poligrafo editore. She has written radio scripts and radio plays produced and broadcast by RAI, Italian Swiss Radi Cristiano Dorigo has been working as a social worker for more than twenty five years. He has published four books co-written with another author and two of his stories have been selected for collective works published by Marsilio, Einaudi and Prospero. His short stories and texts have been published in Italian and US magazines, newspapers and blogs. He is co-creator and co-writer of the award-winning short film "El mostro" (Studio Liz). Michele Catozzi is an author, journalist and computer scientist born in Mestre but who relocated to Venice in his twenties. He has written several short stories, from various genres. He is the author of a number of novels, including Dead Water, Black Lagoon and Toxic Tide. Since 1990 he has also been working as a freelance journalist. For twenty-five years he was editor-in-chief of the monthly magazine Auto d'Epoca, specializing in historic cars. Orsola Casagrande is a Havana-based journalist and film-maker. As a journalist, she worked for 25 years for the Italian daily newspaper il manifesto, and is currently co-editor of the web magazine Global Rights. She writes in Italian, English, Spanish and Turkish, and speaks Kurdish and French, as well as having basic conversational skills in Farsi and the Basque language. Based between Barcelona and Havana, Orsola writes regularly on Spanish, Catalan and Basque politics, as well as the Colombia peace process. She has collaborated with international peace mediator Brian Currin on peace negotat Ginevra Lamberti was born in 1985 and lives in Venice. Her first novel, The question more than anything else, was published in 2015, and translated into French with the title Avant tut, se poser les bonnes questions (Le serpent à plumes, 2017). The chapter 'The Carnival' has been translated into German for the anthology Venedig (Wagenbach, 2017). Samantha Lenarda graduated in Literature and Philosophy, specializing in the study of language and dialects, with particular regard to Venetian. She is a short story writer, and editor of print and digital magazines. Enrico Palandri (b. Venice, 1