Tulip Fever - Softcover

Moggach, Deborah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385334923 ISBN 13: 9780385334921

Publisher: Dial Press, 2001

Synopsis

A sensual tale of art, lust, and deception--now a major motion picture

In 1630s Amsterdam, tulipomania has seized the populace. Everywhere men are seduced by the fantastic exotic flower. But for wealthy merchant Cornelis Sandvoort, it is his young and beautiful wife, Sophia, who stirs his soul. She is the prize he desires, the woman he hopes will bring him the joy that not even his considerable fortune can buy.

Cornelis yearns for an heir, but so far he and Sophia have failed to produce one. In a bid for immortality, he commissions a portrait of them both by the talented young painter Jan van Loos. But as Van Loos begins to capture Sophia's likeness on canvas, a slow passion begins to burn between the beautiful young wife and the talented artist.

As the portrait unfolds, so a slow dance is begun among the household's inhabitants. Ambitions, desires, and dreams breed a grand deception--and as the lies multiply, events move toward a thrilling and tragic climax.

In this richly imagined international bestseller, Deborah Moggach has created the rarest of novels--a lush, lyrical work of fiction that is also compulsively readable. Seldom has a novel so vividly evoked a time, a place, and a passion.

Praise for Tulip Fever

"Sumptuous prose . . . reads like a thriller."--The New York Times Book Review

"An artful novel in every sense of the word . . . deftly evokes seventeenth-century Amsterdam's vibrant atmosphere."--Los Angeles Times

"Need a brief escape into a beautiful and faraway world? Deborah Moggach's wonderful Tulip Fever can offer you that."--New York Post

"Taut with suspense and unexpected revelations."--Entertainment Weekly

"Elegantly absorbing."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

About this title

Review:

The Amsterdam of the early 17th century has been forever immortalised by the serene, precise domestic realism of the canvases of Vermeer and Rembrandt, and has been studied with meticulous care by Simon Schama in his marvellous book The Embarrassment of Riches. What Schama identified at the heart of the opulent display of conspicuous consumption in Dutch still-life painting was an anxiety about wealth and owning commodities. This ran throughout 17th-century life in the Low Countries, an argument beautifully complemented by Ann Pavord's marvellous book on The Tulip.

Deborah Moggach's novel Tulip Fever gives both Schama and Pavord's studies a compelling fictional twist. Set in 1630s Amsterdam, it begins with a typical Renaissance love triangle: a wealthy, elderly merchant Cornelis Sandvoort, his beautiful but frustrated young wife Sophia and the painter who enters their life, Jan van Loos. Commissioned to paint the happy couple's portrait, Jan becomes embroiled in a series of emotional and financial speculations which are to change the character's lives forever. Tulip Fever is a delightfully conceived story which offers a new dimension to what really goes on within the apparently placid domestic interiors of such canvases. --Jerry Brotton (Running time approx 2 hours 20 minutes)

Review:

"Sumptuous prose . . . reads like a thriller."--The New York Times Book Review

"An artful novel in every sense of the word . . . deftly evokes seventeenth-century Amsterdam's vibrant atmosphere."--Los Angeles Times

"Need a brief escape into a beautiful and faraway world? Deborah Moggach's wonderful Tulip Fever can offer you that."--New York Post

"Taut with suspense and unexpected revelations."--Entertainment Weekly

"Elegantly absorbing."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

About this edition

• Publisher: Dial Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0385334923
• ISBN 13: 9780385334921
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288