Tulip Fever - Hardcover

Deborah Moggach

3.52

12,248 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 043400779X ISBN 13: 9780434007790

Publisher: William Heinemann, 1999

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Tulip Fever - 1st Edition/1st Printing

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of 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 commodification which 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. Interspersed with 16 beautifully reproduced Dutch paintings, 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

Review:

'A story of love, deceit, changelings, and mistaken identity worthy of a Restoration dramatist.' (The Daily Mail)

'A sumptuous and enthralling novel about art, love, illusion and money ... with the denouement of a classic.' (The Times)

'Sumptuous prose ... reads like a thriller.' (The New York Times Book Review)

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.