‘Giovanni Segantini and Luigia Bugatti: He painted her when she was little more than a child. He loved her passionately all his life. Giovanni Segantini is put into a reform school as a seven-year old orphan. At the age of twenty he is accepted by the Accademia Brera in Milan. A few years later the gallery owners tear his pictures out of his hands. A novel about an artist’s life and an unusual love. When Giovanni Segantini enrols at the Accademia Brera, he has passed through a traumatic childhood and youth. He is down-at-heel, hungry and penniless. Nevertheless he becomes the closest friend of Carlo Bugatti, a member of a rich middle-class Milanese family who is also studying at the Brera and has already made a name for himself as a cabinet-maker. Carlos’s beautiful, spoilt sister Luigia falls in love with the shy Giovanni who, to the astonishment of everyone at the Brera, wins one prize after the other. The painter and Luigia live together and have four children. Theirs is a turbulent life but Luigia’s dedication to Giovanni’s art and his unshakable love for her steel them against all vicissitudes.
About the author:
Asta Scheib, born in 1939 in the Rhineland town of Bergneustadt, has worked as an editor on a variety of journals. In the 80s she published her first novels and is now one of the best-known women writers in Germany. Her biographical novel Eine Zierde in ihrem Hause. Die Geschichte der Ottilie von Faber-Castell (An Ornament to their House. The Story of Ottilie von Faber-Castell).became a bestseller. Hoffmann und Campe have published her biographical novel In den Gärten des Herzens, Die Leidenschaft der Lena Christ (In the Gardens of the Heart, The Passion of Lena Christ) in 2002 (also as an audiobook), Der Austernmann (The Oysterman) in 2004 and Frost und Sonne (Frost and Sun) in 2007. She lives with her family in Munich. |
