In the autumn of 1948 Hemingway and his fourth wife travelled for the first time to Venice, which Hemingway called 'a goddam wonderful city'. He was a year shy of his fiftieth birthday and hadn't published a novel in nearly a decade.

At a duck shoot in the lagoon he met and fell in love with Adriana Ivancich, a striking Venetian girl just out of finishing school. Di Robilant - whose great uncle moved in Hemingway's revolving circle of bon vivants, aristocrats, and artists - recreates with sparkling clarity this surprising, years-long relationship.

Hemingway used Adriana as the model for Renata in Across the River and Into the Trees, and continued to visit Venice to see her; the Ivanciches travelled to Cuba, placing Adriana beside him as he wrote The Old Man and the Sea.

This illuminating story of writer and muse - which also examines the cost to a young woman of her association with a larger-than-life literary celebrity - is an intimate look at the fractured heart and changing art of Hemingway in his fifties.