Loving Venice

This encounter with the city of the Doges is a sonnet to a place that arouses strong and often contradictory emotions, but rarely indifference. Petr Kral's ethereal French prose, behind which echo the tones of his native Czech, carries us through the floating city as if exploring the body of a familiar yet inscrutable lover. Like a hand stroking the reflection of the crumbling facades in its dark canals, he reveals panoramas of sky, domes and palaces that hover mistily on the water, plunges into the maze of side streets, squares and obscure hotels where every stranger becomes an old friend before vanishing back into the ocean of the night. Kral's passion for Venice enriches us, all the more because, like all great loves, it appears to be forever on the point of dissolving. A portait both intimate and universal, as elusive as venice itself.