Books & Reviews Archive

The book is divided into three chapters, each possessing its own distinct identity. In the first, bearing the evocative title *Paradise Remembered*, the narrator is the writer himself. The idol of his youth is Seymour Levov, “the Swede”: handsome, blond, athletic, a formidable sportsman. The memory of his feats epitomizes a golden era where harmony triumphs. Now in his sixties, the writer is i

The year is 1873 and Butcherʼs Crossing is a Kansas town, in reality a small settlement of buffalo hunters. Andrews is a twenty-year-old youth; he has abandoned Boston for a vague notion of freedom. > Sometimes, after listening to the hushed voices in church and school, he would pass beyond the borders of Cambridge into the lands and woods lying to the southwest. There, in some solitary place,

This is a short story, set in Benin, describing several episodes of a coup d'état. The author finds himself in the African country and is captured, along with a Frenchman, by military forces whose allegiance—whether to the regular army or the putschists—remains unclear. Throughout the narrated events, a general confusion prevails regarding the origins of the coup, the roles played by the militar

We are in the East, in the magical empire of Akbar the Great. > If the war-torn world was a hard truth, then Sikri (the capital of the empire) was a splendid lie . It is a magical world where the mystery of the great sovereign "enchants all the earth, and the future, and all of eternity." Into this wondrous land arrives a traveler hailing from the West, who calls himself Mogor dellʼAmore. He

Among the possible meanings of the word *Freedom*, one defines it as > being able or having the opportunity to do what one wants without being restricted by something or someone (Collins Dictionary). The characters in this novel have always lived poised between the “set of possibilities” and events (what used to be called destiny), which push inexorably toward a specific direction in life. T

It is the mid-1950s in England. Anna is a writer living off the royalties of her successful novel, set in Africa during the Second World War. Divorced after a brief, loveless marriage, she is the mother of a young daughter and a friend to Molly, who is likewise divorced from an immensely wealthy man and the mother of a twenty-year-old son. "Free women," independent, shouldering the burden of ra

Georgette Heyer was one of the most popular twentieth-century English writers. *The Grand Sophy*, recently translated into Italian, chronicles the intrusion of an independent, daring, and willful young woman into a traditional family of the English upper nobility at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The novel opens with Sir Horace’s unexpected request to his sister, the mild-mannered Lady

The theme of sleep purports to be the book’s unifying thread, to the point that the novel is divided into parts corresponding to the various stages of sleep. In reality, it is a device—perhaps overly intellectual—to tell the story of the love between Robert and Sarah. We find ourselves in a university hall of residence. Sarah suffers from a sleep disorder that leads her to confuse dreams with r

This is a series of short stories exploring the lives of women. The narratives unfold delicately, pivoting entirely on emotion, the depiction of context, and interpersonal relationships. The stories have no definitive conclusion, imparting a sense of how life, seen through the eyes of women, is somehow more attuned to the “process” than to the results. The prose contributes admirably to creatin

The novel opens with the description of the setting in which the story will unfold. Sulaco, a natural harbor on the western coast of Costarica, is an > enormous semicircular and unroofed temple, open to the ocean, with its walls of lofty mountains adorned with mourning draperies of clouds . In this natural amphitheater there is a > sanctuary inviolable by the temptations of world trade in t

When walking the streets of a city > every decision, where to turn, how long to linger lost in thought before an abandoned building, was of no consequence, and for this reason was a sign of freedom. I traversed the city’s neighborhoods as though I had to measure them with my stride, and the subway stations served as recurring motifs of my unending wandering . The protagonist and narrator of t

Female friendship lies at the core of this novel. The author chronicles the condition of women in Afghanistan across an extensive span of time, from the 1960s to the present day—from the monarchy to the invasion by Western forces, spanning the “Soviet” period, the civil war, and the Taliban regime. He portrays the harsh reality of women's lives through the trajectories of two female figures: Mari

Delia’s father had always told her that her mother was dead, so much so that she has become a memory continually resurfacing in her mind. > I used to imagine how my mother would come back. (...) In all of these daydreams, death was not as absolute as it was supposed to be, and we always found each other by accident. In all of these daydreams, my mother and I recognized each other without a singl

The story belongs to *The Bandini Quartet* saga, chronicling the fortunes of the Italian-American Bandini family, and of Arturo Bandini in particular. The setting is the family: a bricklayer father who is consequently unemployed during the long Colorado winters, a mother striving to maintain a sense of decency and a bare minimum of subsistence, and three sons, the eldest of whom, Arturo, must als

Chris grew up in a respectable middle-class family. His father runs an installation business: hardworking, reserved, yet attentive to the family’s needs; like all parents, he is full of expectations regarding his son’s future. The mother is protective, affectionate, ready to indulge anything from her boy, so loved and desired. It is a peaceful and well-off household, yet how is it possible that