This book is outside of the five-year window for guaranteed assistance with English language translation. We suggest getting in touch with the relevant funding body for an informal conversation about the possibility of support. Please refer to to our recommendations page for books that are currently covered by our funding guarantee.
Alvise, a young Venetian, is looking for the lost love of his life – Noemi who had gone to the same school for a short time before disappearing back to America, and whom he associates with eating delicious ice-cream – and the right job, rather than the dusty archivist’s one he has ‘sensibly’ started. His chance comes when he is able to take over an ice-cream parlour and return to the one job that had given him pleasure as a schoolboy and student. He has a talent for it and becomes a prize-winning gelatiere. However, thoughts of Noemi resurface and in his quest for love he does indeed find her, and they thrill to each other’s company as adults, too: they live out their childhood dream for a tragically short moment, as the Niagara Falls claim another life and Alvise returns to Venice alone.
press quotes
‘Love in Venice – incredibly sensual!’– Denis Scheck
‘Well-paced and snappy! This debut novel slips down like the best ice-cream.’– Alain Claude Sulzer, author of A Perfect Waiter
‘A compelling tale of love-that-almost-was.’– Die Südostschwiez
about the author
Daniel Zahno was born in 1963 and lives in Basel. This novel was written partly in the writers’ colony of Ledig House, upstate New York, and in the Istituto Svizzero in Venice. His collection of short stories, Doktor Turban, was awarded the Tübinger-Poetik Prize as well as the Clemens Brentano Young Authors Prize, Heidelberg. 2006 saw the publication of his collection of poetry and poetic prose, ImHundumdrehen.
weissbooks.w was founded in 2008 by Anya Schutzbach and Rainer Weiss, previously marketing director and programme director respectively of Suhrkamp Verlag. In March 2009, the publishing house was awarded the Newcomer of the Year Award at the Leipzig Book Fair, and in May this year it received the Frankfurt Gründerpreis, a prize for sucessful new businesses. The trade magazine Buchmarkt praises the new publisher for ‘so swiftly establishing itself as a house of quality’. Its list comprises literary fiction and narrative non-fiction.
translation assistance
Pro Helvetia covers up to 100% of the effective translation costs for literary works by Swiss authors.
All recommendations from Autumn 2009