Books & Reviews Archive

The novel is set in Chile, ten years after the coup d'état that brought Pinochet and the military junta to power, establishing a brutal dictatorship: Chile, > a spot on the map, immersed in a vast and prodigious continent where progress arrives centuries late, (...) a territory in whose eternal humus mythological animals drag themselves along and human beings live unchanged since the dawn of the

The book is a collection of short stories published by a very young Matilde Serao at the age of twenty-two. In 1883, the twenty-six-year-old author, after "four years of militant artistic life," wished she could "change everything," finding these juvenile writings flawed in form, lacking "depth of impressions," and muddled by an "encumbrance of ideas." Reading them more than a century later, thi

> Behind the wall supporting one another, huddling together, forming a clot of suffering and waiting. (...) I heard them moaning, pleading, unheard: because a woman's voice is merely poor breath; and the wall is stone, cement, bricks . This novel speaks of the separateness between man and woman, of two distinct worlds whose boundary is impossible to cross. This theme is "decked out in a rag of a

If we consult the Zingarelli dictionary, we find the following definition of the adjective "boccaccesco": "affected, salacious as in certain tales of Boccaccio." And the dictionary adds: "identifies situations, descriptions, writings of a sexual nature, to which a vein of lightness, amusement, and even mordancy is nonetheless not foreign > . This definition reflects common perception, which stems

The novel is set in Milan at the end of the nineteenth century: a city with its > broad straight avenues and luxury shops, (...) the movement of the trams and the bustle of busy people, intent on making money, working, producing, paying little heed to idle chatter, enjoying life without fuss or fancy ; in the background of human affairs a great clamor prevails, and yet not so far away lies the

Questo romanzo è un vortice dʼacqua, che risucchia lʼintero racconto in un unico incomparabile episodio, tragico ed intenso, dopo il quale niente è come prima. Il problema è che questo mulinello è una «sabbia mobile», così lento e vischioso da sfinire il lettore. Ma andiamo con ordine. Bob è un giovane di trentʼanni, padre di due bambini, sposato con una donna che lo ama; ha un posto fisso e un

Imagine a *Promessi Sposi* where Renzo and Lucia are two lunatics—or presumed to be such—the setting is a late-nineteenth-century Lecco teetering between superstition, charlatanry, and positivism, the center of the narrative is an insane asylum, and the author is not Manzoni, but a debut writer. Antonio Ghislanzoni, the only historical figure among them, tells his friend Baldo Bandini, a penniless

It is a great anti-war novel; it recalls two other books on the subject, both reviewed on this site: Karl Marlantes's *Matterhorn*, set in the Vietnam War, and Erich Remarque's *All Quiet on the Western Front*. While the former is an epic tale, a sort of modern *Iliad* demonstrating the futility of war as an occasion for social change (dispelling a great myth!), and the latter is a descent into th

The decommissioning with which the book deals is that of the Bagnoli steelworks in Naples. Through the literary device of a technician, Vincenzo Buonocore, recounting his story directly to the writer, the history of the factory’s closure and its impact on the social fabric of this town in Campania is interwoven with a personal tale. > If I am to be completely in this book, and Rosaria must be i

The book is an investigative narrative, presented through a series of interviews with immigrants. It spans from the Eastern European prostitute to individuals who have achieved success in the economic, social, and political spheres. What emerges is a highly variegated picture, revealing that, paradoxically, integrating and climbing the social ladder was easier for immigrants who arrived in 1970s

Issa is actually an Italian young man named Christian. He has a perfect command of Arabic. Consequently, the secret services decide to recruit him and dispatch him to Viale Marconi in Rome under the guise of a Tunisian immigrant. His mission is to gather intelligence on a suspected terrorist cell, allegedly operating out of a call center. Sofia—or rather Safia—is an Egyptian woman who married

The novel recounts the peculiar story of Victor, a ghostwriter who is invited over one evening by a married woman, Marta; however, on the verge of making love, Marta dies, and Victor, frightened and uncertain, leaves the house without alerting anyone. Seized by remorse and curiosity, he manages to make contact with Marta’s family: her father, a Madrilenian gentleman; her sister, with whom he hope

The novel is set in the early seventeenth century and narrates the exploits of a country gentleman who, inflamed by chivalric tales, imagines himself to be a knight-errant. He thus embarks on a journey through La Mancha with his squire, Sancho Panza, and two faithful beasts: the horse Rocinante and the donkey. The novel is structured in two parts. In the first part, the most incredible episodes

The delicate elegance of the writing welcomes the reader from the novel’s very first pages: the prosaic, tranquil life of a provincial town, daily routines, rigid social roles, thwarted romances, predictable and mundane existence are described with such affectionate and ironic detail that one wishes the story would continue along this path, as if it were a modern, condensed edition of Marcel Prous

The book is autobiographical in nature and historically set in the early twentieth century. The protagonist, still a girl, is raped by a young man whom she later marries and with whom she has a child. She lives with her husband in a small provincial town, where she strives to abide by social conventions that dictate a woman be confined to the home, in total dependence on man. When her husband l

In upper-bourgeois Turin, a crime is committed: a former Romanian prostitute, married to a wealthy banker, is found strangled. It is later revealed that she was killed by two thugs, hired by the banker's "dear" friend, jealous and bent on revenge after being rejected. The narrative unfolds through the accounts of women involved in one way or another in the crime: the caretaker who discovered the

Fridolin and Albertine are a couple belonging to the solid, respectable bourgeoisie. Their union is founded on "a perfect interpenetration of feelings and ideas." Yet, a masked ball is all it takes—where both had been courted, he "with insinuating kindness," she > at first fascinated and then suddenly offended... with an insolent swearword , for them to be brushed by, > and not for the fir

> He wears old boots, one gaping open at the toe, like a toothless grin. (...) But ultimately nobody sees him, because in Milan, even with the Universal Exposition and its status as the center of the world, a homeless man pushing a cart filled with his life is merely part of the landscape, and thus invisible . With this image of commonplace social indifference, the novel held out the promise of a

The figure of Dracula has spawned a literary and cinematographic output that has exalted its horrific aspects, thereby distorting the complexity of Stoker's novel. The opening of the narrative reflects the preconceived notion we have of Dracula’s story. Jonathan Harker, a young real estate solicitor, travels to the Carpathians to conclude the sale of a property to Count Dracula, who intends to mov

> For ten years now I had been living up here in Vallorgàna alone, in the villa of my ancestors. (...) I was certain that I found myself in the best fortune I could desire. Nothing of importance occurred in my days. Nothing complex entangled my gaze. No disruption in daily life. No decision to hinder my stride . Such is the opening of the tale of the man we will come to know only as the Duke. Hei

The setting is India and the cruel Thugs, who have abducted Tremal-Naik’s daughter to make her the “virgin of the pagoda” in service to the ruthless deity, Kali. Sandokan and Yanez set out to rescue the young girl, embarking on an expedition that leads them into the Ganges Delta—a swampy expanse infested with ferocious beasts and plagued by cholera—down into the subterranean lairs inhabited by th