Prince of the Clouds - Tapa blanda

‘As intoxicating as a glass of fine Italian wine...Set in Sicily, it is so evocative you can almost smell the scent of olives, and love, in the air. But Riotta’s novel is not just two love stories – it also contains one of the most thrilling battle sequences I’ve read in years, a fitting climax to a story so touching it fills my heart with pleasure just to write about it.’ Daily Mail

‘As romantic as Doctor Zhivago, as colourful as García Márquez, Gianni Riotta writes with the vigour of a lover and the crisp knowledge of an academic...If only historians wrote like Riotta.’ Observer

‘A splendidly conceived entertainment delivered with style and wit.’ Independent

‘An entertainment proper for the thinking person...it works for Umberto Eco, it works for Indiana Jones, and now it works for Riotta: the rip-roaring romance with the scholarly plot.’ Michael Pye, New York Times

‘Even more enchanting than Louis de Bernieres’s “Captain Correlli's Mandolin”, Riotta’s novel is a revelation.’ Daily Mail

A rousingly romantic Mediterranean novel of love and war.

World War II has just ended, and Colonel Carlo Terzo, a brilliant military strategist, retires to Sicily with his beautiful Russian wife Emma. There he spends long afternoons tutoring two young lovers – Salvatore, a poet, and the feisty, aristocratic Fiore. But the Terzo household becomes caught in a standoff between rebel peasants and the murderous private army of Fiore's malicious mother. Will Carlo finally be given the chance to measure his learning on a real battlefield?