Modigliani

As of this writing, I have published thirty-three books. A fair number, when I take a step back and reflect. Most of my work, as readers may know, centers around the cultural arts-music, art, and film. Within this broad spectrum, one figure has continually drawn me back, time and again: the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani.

There is a simple reason for this repetition: among all the artists I have studied and written about, Modigliani is the one I love most. His work, his life, and the tragic poetry that surrounds him continue to fascinate and move me on a deeply personal level.

Though I am a writer, I am not a novelist. My books are typically grounded in objective fact and historical research. Of all the volumes I have written, only one has taken the shape of a novel. That earlier book, "Dedo, Modi, Modigliani," was based on Modigliani's real life and told through the lens of the many names he was called-from "Dedo" in his native Livorno to the more familiar "Modi" in Paris. That novel remained closely tied to the known events of his biography.

This new work, "Modigliani: Another Portrait," is something very different. It is, in essence, an imagined life-a novel built on the premise of what might have been. What if the hardships that shaped Modigliani's short life had never occurred? What if his family had not gone bankrupt at his birth? What if he had never suffered from tuberculosis, never succumbed to addiction, never lived in poverty? What if he had never met Jeanne Hébuterne, or perhaps, met someone else entirely?

This book dares to ask those counterfactual questions. In doing so, it turns the familiar tragedy inside out and proposes an alternate path-not necessarily a better one, but a different one. In that sense, it is both an homage and a challenge to the narratives we've come to accept about artists, genius, and fate.

I invite readers to read this story not as a historical account, but as a kind of dream. A parallel portrait. A fictional canvas on which the same soul is painted with a different light.