A Real-world Fantasy City

[mtvessel]

Oct 2021
Venice - Jan Morris – Faber and Faber, 1993
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This is a dreamy portrait of a city that I visited while backpacking round Italy as a second year undergrad. It reads like a particularly well-written guide to a fantasy roleplaying setting. It is as full of detail and richness as Venice itself, from the atmospheric evocation of the buildings to the colourful historical stories. I found it rather too hopscotch in structure for my taste, and Morris has one small fault, which is to characterise groups of people with sweeping generalisations; she makes statements like "The women of Venice are very handsome, and very vain" which are good sound-bites but clearly generally untrue. But as someone who has been denied the opportunity to directly experience other cultures for almost three years, I was very glad to re-visit one of the most extraordinary cities in the world, if only in the imagination.