“Alla larga da Venezia by Piovan and Giliberto recounts about the vassel Gemma Quirina, carrying sixty-eight sailors, laden with wine and spices, does not reach its destination in Flanders, but drifts into the ocean in the middle of winter.
Eleven castaways are welcomed to the paradisiacal island of Røst, beyond the Arctic Circle. This is the setting for tormenting love stories, unmentionable secrets of maidens, stormy seafaring affairs, bullying and punishment of a disbanded crew.
Piero Quirino is the nobleman captain of the ship that left Crete in 1431 and disappeared at the mouth of the English Channel. He is believed to be dead in Venice, but surprisingly, twenty-one months after his departure, he returns home with his few remaining shipmates after a long journey on foot through Sweden and Germany.
To honor a feat best known to scholars for its historical and geographical importance, the authors retrace the exploits of this Venetian nobleman with an account that is respectful of the reality of the facts but at the same time intense and entertaining.
