- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Llumina Press (March 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1932560645
- ISBN-13: 978-1932560640
- Product Dimensions: 24 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 544 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"A compelling novel...Historically accurate...gives us all a new faith in the future of mankind...Bravissimo!" -- Rosario D'Agato, President of Association Dianae Lacus
"Gripping...a hold-your-breath page-turner...Will appeal to a wide audience...A tale you won't forget!" -- Lou Stanek, Ph.D., author of So You Want to Write a Novel
"Gripping...a hold-your-breath page-turner...Will appeal to a wide audience...A tale you won't forget!" -- Lou Stanek, Ph.D., author of So You Want to Write a Novel
Book Description
The time is 1943, a time of war. The place is the hill-perched town of Nemi, in the Alban Hills south of Rome, overlooking the crater lake where, 2000 years before, the Roman emperor Caligula sailed his gigantic ships to the Temple of Diana. Just a few years before the war, the ancient ships, sunk after Caligula's death, were miraculously recovered from the lake and placed in a lakeside museum. Paolo, the museum curator, now struggles to protect these treasures from Allied bombs and the depredations of the Germans in a world where the struggle for simple survival makes such efforts seem irrelevant. He watches with disquiet as the German occupation brings together Rosanna, his daughter, whose innocence is brutalized by the horrors of the war, and Klaus, a German officer, whose high ideals and love for Rosanna cause him soul-wrenching conflicts of loyalty. Love? Or duty? The Mirror of Diana tells the poignant story of Klaus and Rosanna's secret love against the backdrop of war-torn Italy and one of the war's great unsolved mysteries: why were the fabulous ships of Caligula reduced to ashes in the midst of war? The answer may have been foretold in the legend sculpted on The Mirror of Diana.
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First Sentence
He stepped out of the car, lit a cigarette, and looked up at the Alban hills. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
He stepped out of the car, lit a cigarette, and looked up at the Alban hills. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An intriguing, well-constructed novel,
By George Margolin (Evanston, Illinois) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Mirror of Diana: A Novel of War and Love (Paperback)
I'll skip the plot synopsis of 'The Mirror of Diana', as it has already been covered by other reviewers. But I just finished this book and found the plot of this novel refreshingly straightforward. Not that it's lacking in suspense - there's a lot of surprise in this book; in fact, most of the novel's chapters end with a cliffhanger that makes you keep breaking your resolution to "read only one more chapter before going to bed." The difference is that 'The Mirror of Diana' has no gerrymandered plot configurations used by some authors who didn't quite know where they were headed but who felt the need to add some pizzazz, but leave loose ends dangling at the end of the book - you know, the ones that always leave you with a sort of literary indigestion.But this book is a feast - a fascinating and beautiful tale told with the eloquent simplicity of a competent and confident author. I enjoyed this book immensely. You should read it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
If You Liked Corellis Mandolin, You Will Love This Book,
By Marian Loreti (Annapolis, MD) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Mirror of Diana: A Novel of War and Love (Paperback)
Just as I enjoyed Corelli's Mandolin, I adored The Mirror of Diana.The Mirror of Diana, like De Bernieres's fine book, takes place in a Mediterranean country (Italy in this case) and is rich in historical detail and redolent of its wartime setting. But what really propels the plot of The Mirror of Diana is the tender but injudicious love between Klaus, a German officer (it's OK - he's not a Nazi), and Rosanna, an Italian woman; since this takes place in 1943, a time when the two countries are no longer allies, their relationship is fraught with danger. But the Mirror of Diana is far from a clone of Corelli's Mandolin, or any other book for that matter. It involves the fascinating real historical mystery of how the emperor Caligula's fabulous ancient ships, for which Rosanna's father is the caretaker, came to be destroyed in 1944. From the outset, you know the great ships are doomed. But when you discover how, you get the greatest surprise of all - not surprise for its own sake, but surprise because of what the larger-than-life characters are driven to feel, to choose, and to do. Throughout, this book asks the single most important question of all human interaction: when there are conflicting choices, do you listen to your heart or do you listen to your head? And what if your head is telling you more than one thing, and so is your heart? The development of this theme begins on a gentle, sweet note and builds to a searing double climax. The Mirror of Diana will keep you captivated from the first to the last page. I look forward to seeing the movie version of this book some day.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Book that Breaks the Rules,
By E. Darcy (Pemberley) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Mirror of Diana: A Novel of War and Love (Paperback)
To paraphrase Hemingway, people in war are different from the rest of us: they have more troubles. Which is to say that, down deep, they are largely the same as us, regardless of which side they fight on - they laugh, they get hungry, they make love, they make mistakes. Much has been written about war's ability to transform ordinary humans into brute beasts or superhuman heroes. But The Mirror of Diana moves us with its story of how simple kindness, decency, friendship, and love between a good (yes, good) German officer and an Italian and his daughter set off a chain reaction of catastrophe and horror that culminate in one of the greatest archaeological disasters of World War II - the destruction of the monumental ancient ships of Caligula. And this event, in turn, irrevocably changes all the characters' lives. I will leave it to you to see whether the love that brings these compounded tragedies ultimately triumphs.This novel is impressive in that it sets a compelling story inside a well-researched and vivid tableau of occupied Italy during the Second World War. But it also weaves in the ancient legends of the area in which the action takes place, a lake south of Rome that was sacred to the goddess Diana in ancient Roman times. Without resorting to any unseemly spiritualism, the author ingeniously uses the legends as metaphors for the drama taking place in 1943 and 1944. This book causes the palms to sweat and the stomach to lurch. But it also stirs the soul and touches the heart. The Mirror of Diana is a stunner.
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