Italian writer and journalist Andrea Di Robilant will speak at the College of Charleston on Tuesday, October 4 at 2:00 p.m. in Physicians Memorial Auditorium. The lecture is entitled “On the Trail of the Zen Brothers, From Venice to the Great North: The Adventure of Historical Non-Fiction.” The event is free and open to the public.
Andrea di Robilant was born and raised in Italy, but studied history and politics at Columbia University. He spent many years in the United States as a corresondent for the Italian daily newspapers, La Repubblica and La Stampa. In 2003 he wrote his first book A Venetian Affair, (2003) a biography of his ancestor in 18th century Venice based on their correspondence; and a sequel entitled Lucia: A Venetian Life in the Age of Napoleon (2008). In 2011 he published Irresistible North: From Venice to Greenland on the Trail of the Zen Brothers, in which he analyses the claim that two Venetian merchants, the Zeno brothers, sailed over the north Atlantic in a pre-Columbian expedition to North America. He is currently working on a book about mapping the world in Renaissance Venice.
For questions, please contact Dr. Giovanna De Luca 843-953-5717 or delucag@cofc.edu.
