Florence Stories, Carr, Ella

Florences world-famous Renaissance is represented here by its most illustrious chroniclers, beginning with Dantes vision of an Inferno teeming with his Florentine contemporaries, Boccaccios bawdy tales of young Florentine nobles in The Decameron, and the artist Cellinis swashbuckling adventures. The citys long tradition of attracting foreign visitors is celebrated by selections from Mark Twains The Innocents Abroad, E. M. Forsters A Room with a View, and the rapturous impressions of Stendhal (who gave his name to Stendhal syndrome). Mary McCarthy provides a vivid depiction of a twentieth-century market town; Penelope Fitzgerald weaves a gentle comedy of manners among Florences fading aristocracy; Vasco Pratolini, one of the citys most renowned modern authors, tells a tender tale of brotherly love among the urban poor under 1930s fascism; and Salman Rushdie dazzles with the magical realism of The Enchantress of Florence. George Eliot, Rainer Maria Rilke, Henry James, D. H. Lawrence, Somerset Maugham, Cuzio Malaparte, and Iris Origo are among the other brilliant writers whose stories illuminate facets of this fascinating city.