The City of Falling Angels

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The City of Falling Angels, by John Berendt, (author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil), tells the story of some interesting inhabitants of Venice, Italy, that the author met while living there in the months following the fire that destroyed the historic Fenice Theater opera house.

Among those interviewed is Archimede Seguso, who is arguably the finest Venetian glassblower of the twentieth century. Archimede Seguso lives directly behind the Fenice, explaining the amount of passion he begins to feel after it has burned. This passion begins to directly correlate into his glass, and soon he is creating a whole line dedicated to the memory of the Fenice fire, his own rendition of how the opera house burned.

The book explores the local reaction to the Fenice fire, from the Save Venice Foundation to Venice's bureaucratic government.

It also tells the story of many American and English expatriates who went to live in Venice, from Daniel Curtis, who owned Palazzo Barbaro where Henry James and John Singer Sargent were guests, to the poet Ezra Pound who lived the last part of his life in Venice.

Upon this book's release on September 27, 2005, it entered Amazon.com's Top Ten Bestsellers list and was number one on the New York Times bestseller list.