Shylock's Daughter is the
culmination of a love affair with the city of Venice that
begins with Jong's first visit at the age of nineteen.
Drawn by the city's watery beauty and the legacy of
Byron, James and, especially, Shakespeare, who set seven
of his plays there, Shylock's Daughter was
completed over four summers spent in Venice and the
Veneto, growing out of notebooks Jong began for her own
pleasure. Shylock's Daughter begins in the
steamy, paparazzi crazed atmosphere of the Venice Film
Festival where Jessica Pruitt, a famous American actress,
is serving as the Festival's only female judge. Although
her agent urges her to return to her career in Hollywood,
Jessica plans to stay on in the city she has loved since
childhood, enthralled by the intrigue and cruelty of her
Venetian setting. With a poet's mastery of language
courage, wit and eroticism that readers have come to
expect, Jong gives us a revealing portrait of our modern
day film world and a clue to the passions behind
Shakespeare's most enigmatic work.
Reviews:
"A shimmering mix of fantasy, poetry, and
sensuality."
--New Woman
"Beautiful, Floating, Hypnotic... The sex is
unstinted and freewheeling."
--The Washington Post Book World
"Erica Jong has written a sexy adventure
story which is a real page turner. [It] will surprise and
delight her fans and win her many new readers."
--Ken Follett
HarperPaperbacks 1995
250 pages; paperback
0-06-100830-3
Published originally as Serenissima in 1987 by Houghton Mifflin -Top of Page-
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