The Undrowned Child

Set in Venice at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this novel, Lovric's first for children, inhabits a fantasy time and place based upon the city's long, mysterious and water-threatened history.

As a baby Teodora survived a boating accident which left her orphaned, and she now returns to Venice with her adoptive parents. An encounter with a mysterious book and a boy in a bookshop take her 'between the linings' into a dystopian world of mermaids, resurrected historical characters, folklore and bizarre Dickensian characters against whom she battles to save the city.

Complex, convoluted and very long, though lightened with humour and satire, this is a novel which will either enchant and entrap, or dismay and disengage its readers.