Preview

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Bold Ventures

By: Charlotte Van den Broeck, David McKay - translator
Narrated by: Gail Shalan
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $17.49

Buy for $17.49

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

A prize-winning Belgian poet explores the nature of creative endeavor-the godlike ambition, the crushing defeat of failure-through the stories of thirteen tragic architects.

In thirteen fascinating chapters, Charlotte Van den Broeck goes in search of buildings that were fatal to their architects-architects who either killed themselves or are rumored to have done so. They range across time and space from a church with a twisted spire in seventeenth-century France to a theater that collapsed mid-performance in 1920s Washington, DC, and an eerily sinking swimming pool in the author's hometown. Drawing on a vast range of material, from Hegel and Darwin to art history, stories from her own life, and popular culture, Van den Broeck brings patterns into focus as she asks, What is that strange, life-or-death connection between a creation and its creator?

Threaded through each story is the author's meditation on the question of suicide-what Albert Camus called the "one truly serious philosophical problem"-in relation to creativity and public disgrace. The result is a profoundly idiosyncratic book, breaking ground in literary nonfiction, as well as providing solace and consolation to anyone who has ever attempted a creative act.

©2019 Charlotte Van den Broeck; English translation copyright 2022 by David McKay (P)2022 Tantor
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about Bold Ventures

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.