Konstantina Zanou's book could have been called After Venice. It traces the disintegration of the Venetian Adriatic world, through an interlude of alternative empires - French, Austrian, British, and Russian - to an era of nations, or, as she often puts it, nation-states, with special attention to the Ionian islands, or those born there, wherever they then spent their lives. She tells this tale by attending to the concerns of individuals who spanned this space, often by moving through it, but also through the work of the imagination. She offers us a rich, humane, and reflective account.
