The floating book - Michelle Lovric

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.

Michelle Lovric is the author of five novels - Carnevale, The Floating Book (winner of a London Arts Award and chosen as a W H Smith Read of the Week) and The Remedy (longlisted for the 2005 Orange Prize for Fiction) - as well as four children's novels, The Undrowned Child and The Mourning Emporium. She combines her fiction work with editing, designing and producing literary anthologies including her own translations of Latin and Italian poetry. Her book Love Letters was a New York Times bestseller. Lovric divides her time between London and Venice, and holds workshops in both places with published writers of poetry and prose, fiction and memoir.www.michellelovric.com

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
Washington Post - Edward Docx

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