Product Description

Built on an inverted forest, paved with a tortoiseshell of boulders, Venice is a maze of tiny alleys, bridges and squares. Tiziano Scarpa wanders through the city, recounting the customs and secrets that only Venetians know. With everything from practical advice for aspiring Venetian lovers to hints at where to find the best bacaro, Scarpa waves the tourist in the right direction and, without naming a single restaurant, hotel or bar, relates the secret language needed to experience the real Venice. So ignore the street signs - why fight the labyrinth? Venice, the fish, is ready to swallow you whole.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #211372 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-16
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 137 pages

Review
`An eccentric, inspirational travelling companion for Venice-bound travellers that captures this chimerical city so well, it's a vicarious joy for armchair travellers too' --Metro

"Interspersed with nostalgia is practical advice for tourists... elements that merge seamlessly in Scarpa's alluring narrative. Be warned: you'll be booking a flight before you know it"
--Sunday Business Post

`This brief, lyrical meditation on a unique city is not your usual travel book...[it] abounds with odd, charming stories' --Brandon Robshaw, Independent on Sunday

'Elegant, effortless, lyrical' Irish Times
--Irish Times

Review
`[A] luminous tribute... This hilarious, redolent fragment of a book is mandatory reading for anyone heading for La Serenissima' Christopher Hirst, Independent

Independent
A splendidly fishy guide to Venice from a witty and imaginative writer. To write originally about Venice must be one of the greatest challenges a writer can take up. Every year, hundreds of books on the city are published, but none resembles this one.

Customer Reviews

Not as good as it sounded
Reviews made this sound brilliant, and it was, in a few odd phrases here and there but it was otherwise disappointing - and short! It seems like a piece of journalism given too much puff. Compared to Jan Morris's classic it gets nowhere. As a cultural introduction to Venice it would merely confuse. As an occasionally amusing squib to be forgotten as soon as read, ok.

Venetian Venice
'Venice is a Fish' is an unusual book about Venice written by a native, Tiziano Scarpa. It makes no attempt to be a comprehensive guide to the city; instead, it chooses to focus on aspects of the place that interest the author, who organises his material under chapter-titles that mostly refer to the sensory organs (eyes, mouth, etc). And this, for the most part, works. The curious title of the book expresses the author's view that, on a map (one is included in the book), his native city looks much like a sole.
The author clearly knows a lot about Venice and any reader, however knowledgeable about La Serenissima, will find much to enchant her/him in this book (exotic things such as a sculpture that threatens to defeacate on books as well as more mundane items like the origin of 'ciao'). If the translation is anything to go by, Scarpa is an able writer. The book has a bibliography but this will be of very limited use to a non-Italian/Veneziano reader; it is a shame the author did not try to compile a suitable list for monoglot English readers. And the work is padded out at the end with the inclusion of material on Venice by other writers such as de Maupassant, Scarpa himself and a Brazilian. I failed to see the point of this.
But, if you know Venice (or think you do), read 'Venice is a Fish'.

Recommended with a caveat !
I found Tiziano's book a poetic and fresh attempt to 'portray' a city which has been mightily over- represented in art, photography and film. I know Venice well so for me it offered beautiful little flourishes and unusual details. Thus the book is better suited to those who know the city and/ or understand basic Italian or even a few words of Veneziano . A glossary of terms is really vital for non- Italian readers and should be added to any new editions of Venice is A Fish.