Companion to European Literature

"French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Tuesday he would not let his country's literary heritage be taken away by a "friendly" large American company, in a thinly veiled challenge to Google."

"There isn't that much death in Venice these days, or at least not the violent kind. A murder a year, on average, which is only just less than Donna Leon has managed to rack up in the 16 years since her cultivated, incorruptible Commissario Brunetti started to tackle la Serenissima's fictional crime wave. "Really, it's a ridiculously safe place," she says. "I can walk anywhere at two o'clock in the morning, which is almost unheard-of for a city today.""