The lion statues guarding the Venice Arsenal are an important part of the city’s history. The lions—and the inscriptions on them— also play a key role in Hugo Pratt’s Corto Maltese adventure, Fable of Venice. Simone Castaldi, our Corto co-translator, was in Venice recently and went to check out the lions first hand to see if they really have Arabic writings on them, as described in Pratt’s homage to his home town. Simone reports, “There is indeed some sort of writing, but it’s so faded that you could make it into whatever you want it to be, which I think is the spirit of the Corto story in the first place.”
Fable of Venice will be on sale in August.
