A Private Venus NPR coverage of A Private Venus by Giorgio Scerbanenco and Howard Curtis. News, author interviews, critics' picks and more.

A Private Venus

by Giorgio Scerbanenco

Paperback, 241 pages, Random House Inc, List Price: $16.95 |

purchase

Buy Featured Book

Title
A Private Venus
Author
Giorgio Scerbanenco

Your purchase helps support NPR programming. How?

NPR Summary

A Private Venus centers on a disillusioned loner with good reason to be disillusioned. Once a doctor, he was imprisoned for murder after compassionately helping a dying woman kill herself. Now free, but forbidden to practice medicine, Duca gets hired by a Milanese plastics mogul who, like most rich men in noir, is a respectable creep. The assignment is to straighten out the mogul's 22-year-old son, who has gone from being a normal, spoiled heir to a guilty, taciturn young alcoholic. Translated by Howard Curtis.

NPR stories about A Private Venus

Crime writer Giorgio Scerbanenco was born in Kiev in 1911, grew up in Rome and worked for decades as a journalist in Milan. Olycom/Melville House hide caption

toggle caption
Olycom/Melville House

Exploring Life's Incurable Soiledness With The Father Of Italian Noir

  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/303717907/303769612" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript