Vittorio the Vampire - New Tales of the Vampires

"Sensuous . . . Its intensity never flags." --Los Angeles Times "MASTERFUL . . . A STORY ILLUMINATED WITH THE METAPHOR OF GOLD, DRENCHED IN HELLISH DARKNESS AND DRIPPING WITH BLOOD." --USA Today "[A] LUSHLY DESCRIBED STORY OF HOW VITTORIO DI RINIARI BECAME A VAMPIRE . . . In the year 1450, he witnesses the massacre of his entire family by a band of demons. Fleeing from the primal scene, he follows the fiends in search of vengeance, and instead is overcome by the devastatingly beautiful 'strega,' the bare-shouldered Ursula. His desire for revenge--and his desire for Ursula--propels him in a dizzy descent to religion's darkest side." --Publishers Weekly "ANOTHER ENCHANTING PRETERNATURAL TALE . . . SUPERBLY WRITTEN AND ENGAGING." --Associated Press "VITTORIO is set against a magnificent backdrop of history and lore. An opulent feast for the imagination, the lust and passion of the early fourteenth century come to life in Rice's vivid prose." --Rocky Mountain News "A READER'S DELIGHT." --Philadelphia Inquirer Informationen zum Autor Anne Rice Klappentext Educated in the Florence of Cosimo de' Medici, trained in knighthood at his father's mountaintop castle, Vittorio inhabits a world of courtly splendor and country pleasures—a world suddenly threatened when his entire family is confronted by an unholy power. In the midst of this upheaval, Vittorio is seduced by the beautiful and sinister vampire Ursula—setting in motion a chilling chain of events that will mark his life for eternity. Against a backdrop of the wonders—both sacred and profane—and the beauty and ferocity of Renaissance Italy, Anne Rice creates a passionate and tragic legend of doomed young love and lost innocence.When I was a small boy I had a terrible dream. I dreamt I held in my arms the severed heads of my younger brother and sister. They were quick still, and mute, with big fluttering eyes, and reddened cheeks, and so horrified was I that I could make no more of a sound than they could. The dream came true. But no one will weep for me or for them. They have been buried, nameless, beneath five centuries of time. I am a vampire. My name is Vittorio, and I write this now in the tallest tower of the ruined mountaintop castle in which I was born, in the northernmost part of Tuscany, that most beautiful of lands in the very center of Italy. By anyone's standards, I am a remarkable vampire, most powerful, having lived five hundred years from the great days of Cosimo de' Medici, and even the angels will attest to my powers, if you can get them to speak to you. Be cautious on that point. I have, however, nothing whatsoever to do with the "Coven of the Articulate," that band of strange romantic vampires in and from the Southern New World city of New Orleans who have regaled you already with so many chronicles and tales. I know nothing of those heroes of macabre fact masquerading as fiction. I know nothing of their enticing paradise in the swamplands of Louisiana. You will find no new knowledge of them in these pages, not even, hereafter, a mention. I have been challenged by them, nevertheless, to write the story of my own beginnings--the fable of my making--and to cast this fragment of my life in book form into the wide world, so to speak, where it may come into some random or destined contact with their well-published volumes. I have spent my centuries of vampiric existence in clever, observant roaming and study, never provoking the slightest danger from my own kind, and never arousing their knowledge or suspicions. But this is not to be the unfolding of my adventures. It is, as I have said, to be the tale of my beginnings. For I believe I have revelations within me which will be wholly original to you. Perhaps when my book is finished and gone from my hands, I may take steps to become somehow a char acter in th...

Report

"Sensuous . . . Its intensity never flags."
--Los Angeles Times

"MASTERFUL . . . A STORY ILLUMINATED WITH THE METAPHOR OF GOLD, DRENCHED IN HELLISH DARKNESS AND DRIPPING WITH BLOOD."
--USA Today

"[A] LUSHLY DESCRIBED STORY OF HOW VITTORIO DI RINIARI BECAME A VAMPIRE . . . In the year 1450, he witnesses the massacre of his entire family by a band of demons. Fleeing from the primal scene, he follows the fiends in search of vengeance, and instead is overcome by the devastatingly beautiful 'strega,' the bare-shouldered Ursula. His desire for revenge--and his desire for Ursula--propels him in a dizzy descent to religion's darkest side."
--Publishers Weekly

"ANOTHER ENCHANTING PRETERNATURAL TALE . . . SUPERBLY WRITTEN AND ENGAGING."
--Associated Press

"VITTORIO is set against a magnificent backdrop of history and lore. An opulent feast for the imagination, the lust and passion of the early fourteenth century come to life in Rice's vivid prose."
--Rocky Mountain News

"A READER'S DELIGHT."
--Philadelphia Inquirer

Product details

• Authors: Anne Rice
• Publisher: Ballantine
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 27.02.2001
• EAN: 9780345422392
• ISBN: 978-0-345-42239-2
• No. of pages: 289
• Dimensions: 108 mm x 175 mm x 21 mm
• Series: New Tales of the Vampires; Random House Publishing Group
• Subject: Fiction > Science fiction, fantasy