Books & Reviews Archive

A composite crowd, without distinction of sex, wealth, or social standing, gathers awaiting the lottery draw. That morning they feel > the need to eat, to drink, to smoke, feeding vividly on visions of Cockaigne in their imagination, dreaming (...) of a whole bellyful of rich, fatty feasts, devoured in imagination . While the Neapolitan populace, anxious, overexcited, deluded, follows the dra

The book is set during World War II, amid the American advance: in Naples and then, in the final chapters, in Rome and Florence. Malaparte serves as a liaison officer between the Americans and the Italians. And from this arises the contrast between a young and simple society (the American one) and one that is by now decadent and in ruins (the European one). Beyond the themes tied to the immedia

> I lived as a cat must live: up and down, tail lowered, tail held high, now it is time to eat, now it is time to sleep; with the difference that a cat does not have to work to live. At home we lived without words, and the things I carried inside frightened me because I did not know whether they were mine . The protagonist, Natalia, known as Colombetta, is the first-person narrator. She is a y

The pirates of Malaysia attack a ship aboard which Kammamuri is traveling with a young girl, mad. Kammamuri’s courage convinces Sandokan to spare his life and help free the girl’s fiancé, who is held prisoner by Rajah James Brooke. A series of intense adventures unfolds, leading to Sandokan’s victory over the Rajah, the liberation of the girl’s fiancé, Tremal-Naik, and the recovery of sanity by

The novel opens with the events of Tiananmen Square and the flight of one of the revolt’s instigators (the protagonist, Ayamei): the young woman takes refuge with a fishing family in an isolated area, where she is hunted by the Chinese army under the command of a young officer, Zhao. To evade capture, Ayamei flees into the woods and immerses herself in a new life, in close contact with nature, an

The novel is set in Mexico during the period of civil wars between 1911 and 1924, when various revolutionary governments pursued a vigorous anti-Catholic policy in open opposition to the Church of Rome. The protagonist is a priest, a «whisky priest», an alcoholic, father to a daughter he abandoned, a coward to the point of letting hostages who refused to betray him be condemned to death; in short

The novel is set in 1943, during the dramatic months that led to the fall of Mussolini—replaced by Badoglio—the Armistice of September 8, and the king's flight from Rome. In this brief span of time, Italians came to realize what the Fascist regime had truly been, and into what disaster it had plunged them. Like the novel's protagonist, the officer cadet Johnny, Italians were seized by an indigna