Reading Brodsky's essays is like a conversation with an immensely erudite, hugely entertaining and witty (and often very funny) interlocutor. This collection of forty-eight short pieces on Venice showcase Joseph Brodsky at his very best: witty, intelligent, moving and elegant. Looking at every aspect of Venice, from its waterways, streets and architecture to its food, politics and people, Brodsky captures the magnificence and beauty of the city, and recalls his own memories of the place he called home for many winters, as he remembers friends, lovers and enemies he has encountered. Watermark is an unforgettable piece of writing, and a wonderful portrait of a remarkable, unique city. This title is winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Essayist and poet Joseph Brodsky was one of the most penetrating voices of the twentieth century. This prize-winning collection of his diverse essays includes uniquely powerful appreciations of great writers: on Dostoevsky and the development of Russian prose, on Auden and Akhmatova, Cavafy, Montale and Mandelstam. These are contrasted with his reflections on larger themes of tyranny and evil, and subtle evocations of his childhood in Leningrad. Brodsky's insightful appreciation of the intricacies of language, culture and identity connect these works, revealing his remarkable gifts as a prose writer.

«Mit diesem Buch hat der russische Dichter und Nobelpreisträger Joseph Brodsky eine Liebeserklärung an Venedig geschrieben. Eine hymnische Hommage an die Lagunenstadt, an ihre Kunst, ihre Architektur, ihre inspirierende Schönheit. Und gleichzeitig die Selbstauskunft eines der großen Dichter unserer Zeit. Vor langer Zeit, als man für den Dollar noch 870 Lire erhielt, kam Joseph Brodsky zum ersten Mal nach Venedig. Er war zweiunddreißig Jahre alt und kannte die Stadt bisher nur aus einem zerfledderten Buch von Henri de Regnier und von ein paar kostbar gehüteten Postkarten, die ihm eine Jugendfreundin einst zum Geburstag geschenkt hatte. Aber seit jener Zeit stand für den Dichter aus Petersburg fest: «Sollte ich einmal Rußland verlassen dürfen, dann würde ich sofort nach Venedig reisen.» Seitdem ihn seine Landsleute ausgebürgert haben, reist er nun jedes Jahr von New York nach Venedig, im Winter, wenn die Luft klar ist und die Farben von jener Durchsichtigkeit, wie wir sie von den Bilder Canalettos kennen. Seiner Liebe zu Venedig, der «Stadt des Auges», die auf keinem festen Fundament steht, gibt er in diesem Buch Ausdruck.»

A Platonic dialogue in the form of a double anachronism — the action takes place two centuries after our era — Joseph Brodsky's only play, Marbles, is set in a prison cell that alone provides for the three unities of classic drama: those of time, place, and action. A nightmare rather than a utopia, this play proceeds according to the immanent logic of mental aggravation as its two characters, the inmates Publius and Tullius, examine the tautology of their psychological, historical, and purely physical confines. The fusion of its dour, somewhat terrifying vision with the macabre hilarity of its verbal texture allows Marbles to take its audience beyond the farthest reaches of the theatre of the absurd, into territory more suitable for modernist imagination than for human experience.