Tulip Fever: Deborah Moggach - Softcover

Moggach, Deborah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1784700800 ISBN 13: 9781784700805

Publisher: Vintage, 2017

Synopsis

Seventeenth-century Amsterdam – a city in the grip of tulip fever.

Sophia’s husband Cornelis is one of the lucky ones grown rich from this exotic new flower.

To celebrate, he commissions a talented young artist to paint him with his beautiful young bride.

But as the portrait grows, so does the passion between Sophia and the painter; and ambitions, desires and dreams breed an intricate deception and a reckless gamble.

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

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

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

"A byzantine plot that hurtles towards disaster, while retaining the polished veneer of a Dutch interior" (Harpers & Queen)

"Sensuous and masterly...a gorgeous novel" (Mail on Sunday)

"Clever, spry and sad in equal measure...a pacy plot whose twists and shifts of viewpoint make for much anxious page-turning" (Daily Telegraph)

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1784700800
• ISBN 13: 9781784700805
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288