Showing results by author "Marlena de Blasi" in All Categories

From village feasts and rustic tavernas to ancient piazzas and moonlit balconies, the smells, tastes, sounds, and soul of Umbria come alive in Marlena de Blasi's evocative memoir. By turns romantic and sensual, joyous and celebratory, touching and humorous, Marlena de Blasi's account of moving with her husband, Fernando, to Orvieto, the largest city in Italy's Umbria, will appeal to anyone who delights in travel and shares the fantasy of beginning a new life in a very different place.

Marlena de Blasi, best-selling memoirist of A Thousand Days in Venice, makes her remarkable fiction debut with this poignant tale. Deemed an illegitimate child by her royal Polish family, Amandine is abandoned as a baby at a French convent. As she grows, Amandine struggles to accept her orphaned state. She longs to put together the missing pieces of her identity, but as World War II engulfs Europe, her time to find answers may be running short.

One summer in Sicily, Marlena de Blasi entered a world of unforgettable magic when she discovered the secret Sicilian villa of Donnafugata. There life was ruled by ritual and by an unassailable 70-year-old matriarch and protectress, Tosca.