Alberto Garlini's 'Venise est une fête' centers on Hemingway's 1950 Venice stay

Alberto Garlini's new novel 'Venise est une fête' (Éditions Bourgois) takes Ernest Hemingway as its central character, set during his 1950 stay in Venice as his novel 'Across the River and Into the Trees' is about to be published. The story opens with Hemingway's suicide as a prologue. Garlini then follows four characters: Hemingway; Adriana Ivancic, the young aristocrat who modeled for Renata in Hemingway's novel; her friend Maria; and Roberto, an Italian living and teaching in Missoula, USA, who fought in the war like Hemingway and seeks to tell the writer about a mutual acquaintance, Paolo, who died. Roberto misses his meeting with Hemingway but encounters Maria, an eccentric young aristocrat who is one month pregnant, realizes she does not love her husband, cuts her hair, and flees the marital home in her nightgown. Their instant love affair is immediately known in Venice, leading to a mistaken belief of kidnapping. Hemingway, already in trouble with his wife and public morality due to his affair with Adriana, intervenes in a nocturnal chase through Venice. The novel explores doubling in fiction, the weight of rumors, writerly honesty, and the eternal mystery of Venice.