Lovers of Ernest Hemingway's work will thrill to the paperback release of “Autumn in Venice: Ernest Hemingway and his Last Muse.” (Its first printing was last year.)
So will lovers of gossip.
Author Andrea di Robilant is brilliant at gossip. His book records Hemingway's first visit to Venice in 1948. The ship and his wife, Mary, their big blue Buick convertible and their 30 pieces of luggage were en route to France. But when they docked at Genoa for repairs, he decided to revisit the region where he was deployed and seriously wounded as an ambulance driver in World War I.
He met old friends, reconnected with his Italian publishers, and soon he and Mary settled in Venice, though taking time out to stay on the island of Torcello and ski at Cortina. Soon he was keeping court at Harry's Bar and the Gritti, drinking the afternoons away in the company of “eclectic and worldly” buddies, including Princess Aspasia of Greece and Carlo di Robilant, a World War II pilot, the author's great uncle, and, like Hemingway, a formidable drinker.
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