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The Birth of Venus [sound recording]

Alessandra is not quite fifteen when her prosperous merchant father employs a young painter to adorn the walls of the new family chapel. She is fascinated by his talents and envious of his abilities. Soon her love of art and her lively independence are luring her into closer involvement with taboo areas of life. At night in the streets of Florence she observes a terrible evil stalking the city and witnesses the rise of the fiery young priest, Savanarola, who has set out to rid the city of vice, richness, even art itself. Alessandra must make decisions about her adult life, as Florence itself must choose between the old ways of the luxury-loving Medicis and the asceticism of Savanorola.

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  • "The birth of Venus"@it
  • "Fo luo lun sa de ai yu si"
  • "Birth of venus"
  • "Book clubs to go"@en
  • "Birth of Venus"
  • "Birth of Venus"@it
  • "Book clubs to go : Birth of Venus"@en
  • "Roman o ljubezni, umetnosti in izdajstvu v renesančnih Firencah"@sl
  • "佛罗伦萨的爱与死"

author

contributor

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description

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  • "Alessandra is not quite fifteen when her prosperous merchant father employs a young painter to adorn the walls of the new family chapel. She is fascinated by his talents and envious of his abilities. Soon her love of art and her lively independence are luring her into closer involvement with taboo areas of life. At night in the streets of Florence she observes a terrible evil stalking the city and witnesses the rise of the fiery young priest, Savanarola, who has set out to rid the city of vice, richness, even art itself. Alessandra must make decisions about her adult life, as Florence itself must choose between the old ways of the luxury-loving Medicis and the asceticism of Savanorola."@en
  • "This new deluxe eBook edition features more than eighty additional pages of exclusive, author-approved annotations throughout the text, which contain new illustrations and photographs, to enrich your reading experience. You can access the eBook annotations with a simple click or tap on your eReader via the convenient links. Access them as you read the novel or as supplemental material after finishing the entire story. There is also Random House Reader's Circle bonus content, which is sure to inspire discussion at book clubs everywhere. 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 Florence palazzo. A child of the Renaissance with a precocious mind and a talent for drawing, Alessandra is intoxicated by the artist's abilities. But Alessandra's parents have made plans for their daughter, and she is soon married off to a wealthy, much older man. Meanwhile, the reign of the Medicis, with their love of luxury, learning, and dazzling art, is being threatened by the hellfire preaching and increasing brutality of the fundamentalist monk Savonarola and his reactionary followers. As the city shudders with violence and change, Alessandra must find her own way'and finally explore the passions she's kept so long at bay. "Simply amazing, so brilliantly written . . . almost intolerably exciting at times, and at others, equally poignant."'Antonia Fraser "A broad mural bursting with color, passion, and intrigue."'People."@en
  • "De liefdesgeschiedenis tussen een Florentijnse koopmansdochter en een Hollandse schilder speelt zich af tegen de achtergrond van veranderende Renaissance-ideeën."
  • "Au début du XVIe siècle, à Florence, Alessandra Cecchi coule des jours heureux au milieu de tableaux de maître et de la fortune familiale. Mais bientôt les choses se gâtent. La doxa condamne le beau, la culture, tout ce qui permet l'éveil des consciences. Et les Français approchent..."
  • "When Savonarola begins to exert control over the city of Florence, Alessandra Cecchi must make the choices of her life and retain her individuality."
  • "Sarah Dunant's gorgeous and mesmerizing novel, Birth of Venus, draws readers into a turbulent 15th-century Florence, a time when the lavish city, steeped in years of Medici family luxury, is suddenly besieged by plague, threat of invasion, and the righteous wrath of a fundamentalist monk. Dunant masterfully blends fact and fiction, seamlessly interweaving Florentine history with the coming-of-age story of a spirited 14-year-old girl. As Florence struggles in Savonarola's grip, a serial killer stalks the streets, the French invaders creep closer, and young Alessandra Cecchi must surrender her "childish" dreams and navigate her way into womanhood. Readers are quickly seduced by the simplicity of her unconventional passions that are more artistic than domestic: Dancing is one of the many things I should be good at that I am not. Unlike my sister. Plautilla can move across the floor like water and sing a stave of music like a song bird, while I, who can translate both Latin and Greek faster than she or my brothers can read it, have club feet on the dance floor and a voice like a crow. Though I swear if I were to paint the scale I could do it in a flash: shining gold leaf for the top notes falling through ochres and reds into hot purple and deepest blue. Alessandra's story, though central, is only one part of this multi-faceted and complex historical novel. Dunant paints a fascinating array of women onto her dark canvas, each representing the various fates of early Renaissance women: Alessandra's lovely (if simple) sister Plautilla is interested only in marrying rich and presiding over a household; the brave Erila, Alessandra's North African servant (and willing accomplice) has such a frank understanding of the limitations of her sex that she often escapes them; and Signora Cecchi, Alessandra's beautiful but weary mother tries to encourage yet temper the passions of her wayward daughter. A luminous and lush novel, The Birth of Venus, at its heart, is a mysterious and sensual story with razor-sharp teeth. Like Alessandra, Dunant has a painter's eye--her writing is rich and evocative, luxuriating in colors and textures of the city, the people, and the art of 15th-century Florence. Reminiscent of Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring, but with sensual splashes of color and the occasional thrill of fear, Dunant's novel is both exciting and enchanting. --Daphne Durham."@en
  • "Turning fifteen in Renaissance Florence, Alessandra Cecchi becomes intoxicated with the works of a young painter whom her father has brought to the city to decorate the family's Florentine palazzo."
  • "Turning fifteen in Renaissance Florence, Alessandra Cecchi becomes intoxicated with the works of a young painter whom her father has brought to the city to decorate the family's Florentine palazzo."@en
  • "A history of Florence during the Renaissance as seen through the eyes of a teenager whose father hires a painter to decorate the family chapel."
  • "In the declining years of the rule of the Medici over Renaissance Florence, an atmosphere of enlightenment and sophistication prevailed; gorgeous art, relaxed mores, and intellectual freedom were the order of the day. But the puritan ideologue Savonarola began to exert ever more control over the city, and was turning it, bit by bit, into a totalitarian theocratic city-state, burning art and banning books with abandon. It is in this atmosphere that Alessandra, an unusually educated woman, must make the choices of her life: a marriage of convenience to her brother's homosexual lover and a dangerous fascination with the intense, mystical painter who comes to decorate her parents' chapel. As the world becomes increasingly unsafe for her, she must choose her own path and retain her own individuality."@en
  • "From its first arresting sentence, Sarah Dunant's magnificent novel embroils the reader in the coming-of-age story of Alessandra Cecchi, a fourteen-year-old girl with a strong will and a passion for painting. The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain's most innovative writers of literary suspense. 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. 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."
  • "From its first arresting sentence, Sarah Dunant's magnificent novel embroils the reader in the coming-of-age story of Alessandra Cecchi, a fourteen-year-old girl with a strong will and a passion for painting. The Birth of Venus is a tour de force, the first historical novel from one of Britain's most innovative writers of literary suspense. 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. 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."@en
  • "De liefdesgeschiedenis tussen een Florentijnse koopmansdochter en een Hollandse schilder speelt zich af tegen de achtergrond van veranderende renaissance-ideeën."
  • "Alessandra Cecchi is not quite fifteen when her father, a prosperous merchant, brings a young painter back from northern Europe to decorate the chapel walls in the family's Florentine palazzo."

genre

http://schema.org/genre

  • "Historical"
  • "Historical fiction"@en
  • "Historical fiction"
  • "Text"
  • "Large type books"
  • "Romance fiction"
  • "Love novels"
  • "Powieść angielska"
  • "Electronic books"@en
  • "Belletristische Darstellung"
  • "Anglické romány"
  • "English fiction"
  • "Milostné romány"
  • "Miscellaneous fiction"
  • "History"
  • "History"@en
  • "Ausgabe"
  • "History"@es
  • "Roman historique"
  • "Historické romány"
  • "Historical novels"
  • "Love stories"@en
  • "Fiction"
  • "Fiction"@en
  • "Fiction"@es

name

http://schema.org/name

  • "Das Zeichen der Venus : Roman"
  • "Rođenje Venere : ljubav i smrt u Firenci"
  • "Rozhdenie Venery"
  • "La nascita di Venere"@it
  • "La nascita di Venere"
  • "The Birth of Venus [sound recording]"@en
  • "Rozhdenie venery"
  • "הולדת ונוס"
  • "Weinasi de dan sheng : Foluolunsa de ai yu si = The birth of venus : love and death in florence"
  • "The birth of Venus : a novel"@en
  • "The birth of Venus : a novel"
  • "Zrození Venuše"
  • "De geboorte van Venus : liefde en dood in Florence"
  • "Rojstvo Venere : ljubezen in smrt v Firencah"@sl
  • "The Birth Of Venus"@en
  • "Amor y muerte en Florencia"@es
  • "Amor y muerte en Florencia"
  • "The birth of Venus"@en
  • "The birth of Venus"
  • "The birth of Venus : love and death in Florence"
  • "The birth of Venus : love and death in Florence"@en
  • "Weinasi de dan sheng : Foluolunsa de ai yu si = The birth of Venus : love and death in Florence"
  • "Das Zeichen der Venus Roman"
  • "Birth of venus"
  • "The birth of Venus : love and death in Florence ; a novel"@en
  • "La naissance de Vénus"
  • "Venuksen syntymä"@fi
  • "Raǵanjeto na Venera"
  • "The birth of Venus : a novel / S"
  • "维纳斯的诞生"
  • "The birth of Venus love and death in Florence"@en
  • "Venuksen syntyma"
  • "Huledet ṿenus"
  • "Wei na si de dan sheng"
  • "Rođenje venere : ljubav i smrt u Firenci"
  • "The birth of venus"@en
  • "Rojstvo Venere : roman o ljubezni, umetnosti in izdajstvu v renesančnih Firencah"@sl
  • "The birth of Venus a novel"@en
  • "Venus födelse : kärlek och död i Florens"@sv
  • "The Birth of Venus"@en
  • "Rođenje venere : ljubav i smrt u firenci"
  • "Venus' fødsel : kærlighed og død i Firenze"@da
  • "Рождение Венеры"
  • "Amor Y Muerte En Florencia"
  • "The birth of venus (random house reader's circle deluxe reading group edition) a novel"@en
  • "维纳斯的诞生 : 佛罗伦萨的爱与死 = The birth of venus : love and death in florence"
  • "Venus' fødsel : kærlighed og død i Firenze : roman"@da
  • "De geboorte van Venus - grote letter : liefde en dood in Florence"
  • "The birth of Venus / love and death in Florence"@en
  • "Narodziny Wenus"@pl
  • "Narodziny Wenus"

workExample

http://schema.org/workExample