The Birth of Venus, Sarah Dunant
The Birth of Venus, Sarah Dunant
3 Rating(s)
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

The Birth of Venus

Author: Sarah Dunant

Narrator: Kathe Mazur

Unabridged: 13 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/12/2003

Synopsis

Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous cloth merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family’s Florentine palazzo. A child of the Renaissance, with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the painter’s abilities.

But their burgeoning relationship is interrupted when Alessandra’s parents arrange her marriage to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, Florence is changing, increasingly subject to the growing suppression imposed by the fundamentalist monk Savonarola, who is seizing religious and political control. Alessandra and her native city are caught between the Medici state, with its love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, and the hellfire preaching and increasing violence of Savonarola’s reactionary followers. Played out against this turbulent backdrop, Alessandra’s married life is a misery, except for the surprising freedom it allows her to pursue her powerful attraction to the young painter and his art.

The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain’s most innovative writers of literary suspense. It brings alive the history of Florence at its most dramatic period, telling a compulsively absorbing story of love, art, religion, and power through the passionate voice of Alessandra, a heroine with the same vibrancy of spirit as her beloved city.

About The Author

Sarah Dunant is the author of the international bestsellers The Birth of Venus, In the Company of the Courtesan, Sacred Hearts, and Blood and Beauty, which have received major acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Her earlier novels include three Hannah Wolfe crime thrillers, as well as Snowstorms in a Hot Climate, Transgressions, and Mapping the Edge. She has two daughters and lives in London and Florence.Käthe Mazur (pronounced “kay-ta”) has been heard on many BOT titles, including Vanished Smile by R. A. Scotti, Hillary Clinton’s Living History, Ann Coulter’s Slander and Treason, and Sarah Dunant’s The Birth of Venus. She also continues to work extensively in film, television, and theater.

Reviews

AudiobooksNow review by Rebecca on 2007-06-26 17:37:48

I really tried to like this book, but ultimately I could not even finish it. It was a little boring for me, I wanted the plot to advance more quickly. Had the story been advanced sooner, I could have withstood the period-appropriate-but-nevertheless-annoying chauvinistic attitudes of the men in the story, but at some point I felt that was all I was getting and I just put it down for good.

Goodreads review by Lesley

After reading this for the second time I wish I could give it higher than five stars. I discovererd new things about this book that I hadn't caught before. Such a wonderful book and I can't wait to read it for the third time! This is an absolutely amazing book. The author has done a lot of research a......more

Goodreads review by James

A few points about this book: If you choose to read it, skip the Prologue. It gives away the last quarter of the book. (I found this very frustrating.) The middle of the book is fine. It's basic historical romance stuff with interesting, smart characters. The end of this book sucks. The main character,......more

Goodreads review by Pauline

I loved this book. Right up until the very last chapter, I loved it. And then… if I hadn’t been reading on my Kindle, I’d have hurled the thing across the room. Ack. I can’t talk about the reasons for this without giving away spoilers, so if you don’t want to know anything, don’t read the second hal......more

Goodreads review by Pauline

I sometimes wonder if it is safe for a novelist to attempt to portray cultures other than her own. Sarah Dunant is an English writer who now divides her time between London and Florence (half her luck!) I daresay she feels that, having studied Italian history and lived amongst Italians, she knows It......more

Quotes

“Simply amazing, so brilliantly written...almost intolerably exciting at times, and at others, equally poignant.”
–Antonia Fraser

“A beautiful serpent of a novel, seductive and dangerous...full of wise guile, the most brilliant novel yet from a writer of powerful historical imagination and wicked literary gifts. Dunant’s snaky tale of art, sex and Florentine hysteria consumes utterly–but the experience is all pleasure.”
–Simon Schama

“Sarah Dunant has given us a story of sacrifice and betrayal, set during Florence’s captivity under the fanatic Savonarola. She writes like a painter, and thinks like a philosopher: juxtapositioning the humane against the animal, hope against fanaticism, creativity against destruction. The Birth of Venus is a tour de force.”
–Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire

“Dunant has created a vivid and compellingly believable picture of Renaissance Florence: the squalor and brutality; the confidence and vitality; the political machinations. Her research has obviously been meticulous....A magnificent novel.”
–The Telegraph (London)

“It’s to Dunant’s credit that the vast quantities of historical information in this book are deployed so naturally and lightly....On the simplest level, this is an erotic and gripping thriller, but its intellectual excitement also comes from the way Dunant makes the art and philosophy of the period look new and dangerous again....Theology has rarely looked so sexy.”
–The Independent (London)

“No one should visit Tuscany this summer without this book. It is richly textured and driven by a thrillerish fever.”
–The Times (London)

“[Dunant’s] control, pace, and instinct are well-nigh impeccable.”
–The Financial Times

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List