NEW YORK - Italian professor and author of A Venetian Affair, Andrea Di Robilant, adds to the grand Italian canon of history with his newest novel, This Earthly Globe. His seventh book, published by Alfred A. Knopf, is a narrative collection that weaves together the cloth of the world through 16th century geographical texts, maps, and accounts. 

 At Di Robilant’s book talk on Dec. 10 in New York City, he introduced the audience to Giovanni Battista Ramusio - a geographer and translator that was, for much of recent Italian history, uncredited for his large scope of editing maps of the world made by other europeans. Di Robilant emphasized at his New York talk that Venice in the 15th century had desperately wanted to join the European leaders of exploration and help forge the history of the world.

He noted, “Venice tried to get in that game, (of exploration towards the East) but of course…Venice did not have the capacity to rival these other Atlantic powers …The main industry in Venice became the publishing industry. ‘We can’t travel, but we can publish books about travel,’ was the motto of the Venetians. Ramusio, in his privileged position as son of the Republic of Venice’s magistrate, became key in compiling these books.

 Ramusio himself traveled very little, but he was responsible for publishing and translating the accounts of many notable travelers - Marco Polo, Niccolo’ Da Conti, and Giosafat Barbaro to name a few. Di Robilant, in his preparation for the novel, leafed through archived material in Italy, piecing together the stories that Ramusio told with the known history of European exploration and imperialism. 

 Di Robilant and Ramusio mirror one another, half a millennium apart, by connecting the complete story of world history through their own understanding of others’ texts. Ramusio took accounts from Europeans that traveled not only East and West, but South to the lower parts of the Mediterranean. Ramusio was able to understand the colonial violence incurred by the Europeans in North Africa, the journey which Andrea Di Robilant then moves through again in This Earthly Globe. 

 At his book talk, Di Robilant was joined by Todd Portonwitz, senior editor at Knopf, who understood Di Robilant’s book not only as a history of map making or scientific anthology of exploration, but as a story of people.

Portnowitz said, “There are so many explorers in this novel that were all sort of put together in Ramusio’s anthology…how did you include them all in This Earthly Globe?” Di Robilant responded, “I wanted to get a sense of the ‘Ramusio method’. How did he get these accounts, and what did he do with them? I wanted to share a sense of excitement with the reader - the excitement of reading these things for the first time.” 

 Di Robilant’s recent book is not only an educational account of European exploration and map-making history, but a thrilling adventure of people, places, and publishing, that were the foundation of the maps of the earthly globe today.

This Earthly Globe 

Alfred A. Knopf - New York City

272 pages

$30 from Penguin Random House

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