Donna
Leon was born and raised in New Jersey and taught English literature in
many foreign locales, including Italy, Iran and China, before she began to devote all her
time to writing. Living outside of the United States since 1969, she settled
permanently in Venice in 1981, attracted by its civility, beauty and luxury of
life. Death at La Fenice,
the first in her long-running mystery series featuring Commissario Guido
Brunetti, won Japan's Suntory Prize for best suspense novel in 1991. Friends
in High Places (2000) was awarded the
Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction from the Crime Writers' Association. The 20th Brunetti novel, Drawing Conclusions, is an
April 2011 publication from Atlantic Monthly Press.
Aside from completing a new Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery each year, she is deeply involved with the music of the Baroque era and is a supporting producer of Il Complesso Barocco (opera company) based in Florence, Italy.
On your nightstand now:
Emma; Rubicon by Tom Holland; and back issues of the London Review of Books, the New York Review, the New Yorker, Espresso and--yes--the Nation.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Wind in the Willows and thus my great affection for badgers.
Your top five authors:
Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Vikram Seth, John Donne, Ross MacDonald.
Book you've faked reading:
Paradise Lost.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Dog Boy by Eva Hornung (who also has written other novels under the name Eva Sallis).
Book you've bought for the cover:
I've never done that.
Book that changed your life:
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn.
Favorite line from a book:
I think in Emma it is said of Mrs. Norris that "she talked of it everywhere as something that was not to be spoken of."
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Bleak House.