# John Berendt

john berendt (born December 5, 1939) is an American author, known for writing the best-selling non-fiction book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which was a finalist for the 1995 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction, and The City of Falling Angels, which tells the story of interesting inhabitants of Venice, Italy, whom Berendt met while living there in the months following a fire which destroyed the historic La Fenice opera house in 1996. == Early life == Berendt grew up in Syracuse, New York, where both of his parents were writers. As an English major at Harvard University, he worked on the staff of the Harvard Lampoon.