Venetian Masters: Under the Skin of the City of Love by Bidisha

Very few people, Italians included, get to experience the real Venice. The sinking city has been mythologised in history, art, literature and music for centuries, but memoirs and stories tend to resonate with cliches of its high aestheticism, the pleasures of the good life and the contrastingly dark underbelly of vendettas and crimes of passion.

During two long, humid summers, Bidisha, a young writer from London, set out to explore the truth of the revered City of Love. She was guided through its intricate social conventions by her best friend's family, as characterful and regal as anything Henry James could invent, who have been established in one of the most famous palazzi on the Canal Grande since making their fortune importing glass beads in the seventeenth century.

While learning valuable lessons about the easygoing rhythm of 'the Italian way', Bidisha also glimpsed the coldness and disturbing prejudices that exist close beneath the sophisticated surface of this stylish place.

"Venetian Masters" is a witty portrait of a family and a slice-of-life observation of a city where the police officers look like male models, vicious public arguments flare up over the behaviour of pet dogs and the theft of a bottle of champagne from a pavilion at the Art Biennale constitutes the greatest crime wave of the last five years.