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When a fire rips through the Venetian Arsenal in 1569, the enigmatic Emanuele De Zante, spy-catcher and secret agent, is betrayed by his lover, imprisoned, and accused of treason. Given the chance to escape, he embarks on a trans-European odyssey that will test his loyalty and force him to question even his own identity.
Through a series of deadly political games leading all the way to the Sultan’s palace in Constantinople, De Zante and his companions spiral headfirst toward a conflict in which the great empires of the Republic of Venice and the Ottomans threaten the very foundations of civilization.
Wu Ming
Wu Ming is a collective of five Italian fiction writers, founded in Bologna in January 2000. They co-authored a number of books including 54 and the bestselling novel Q, under the previous pseudonym "Luther Blissett."
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Shaun Whiteside
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Shaun Whiteside has translated over fifty books from German, French, Italian and Dutch, including novels by Amélie Nothomb, Luther Blissett, Wu Ming and Marcel Möring. His translations of Freud, Musil, Schnitzler and Nietzsche are published by Penguin Classics. His translation of the novel Magdalena the Sinner by Lilian Faschinger won the 1996 Schlegel-Tick Prize. His most recent translation from German is Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany by Norman Ohler. He lives in London.
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