Books & Reviews Archive

The novel is set in the second half of the nineteenth century in Sardinia, in Norbio, a small town surrounded by ancient woodlands. Angelo was orphaned as a child: > his entire life is a slow transition from the peasant condition to the bourgeois condition, or, as they used to say in Norbio, to the gentlemanly condition . This trajectory, which constitutes the central thread of the book, is n

The Yacoubian Building is an emblematic space of contemporary Egypt, dominated by a corrupt, undemocratic regime where abuse of power, cunning, and deceit seem to be the defining traits. A young woman is forced to endure the advances of her employers, only to fall in love with an aging, depraved landowner on the verge of being driven out of his home by his sister. The girl’s former fiancé is rej

The novel possesses two primary narrative threads. The first is a grand historical fresco of the Sultanate of Zanzibar shortly before the partition of East Africa at the 1885 Berlin Conference. As an Indian friend explains to the sixteen-year-old Yusuf, the Europeans > are not interested in trade, but in the land itself. And everything on it... us. (...) We will lose everything, including our wa

The book brings together 12 stories set in the Libyan desert: > in that desolate, impenetrable expanse, where spirits and mysterious enigmas hovered . The past tense is mandatory, for the primordial world of the desert has by now vanished, destroyed by the cruel colonialism of the Italians, by pervasive drought, and by war. The stories differ in content and style, yet a shared historical and h

The book is set in an asylum, and the narrator (and protagonist) is a psychiatrist. In the first part of the book, the character of a former hospital physician is delineated—a commanding figure and a man of science. The close examination of his persona reveals a whole series of idiosyncrasies (he never leaves the asylum, fears thunderstorms, never touches the doors leading to the various wards,

Guido Guerrieri is a criminal defense lawyer asked by a colleague to look into whether an investigation regarding a young woman’s disappearance can be reopened. Albeit reluctantly, Guerrieri turns investigator and uncovers a narrative of drug consumption and dealing to which the girl fell victim. The mystery is well-crafted. The reader is skillfully guided toward the conclusion, which, while n

In Afghanistan, a woman finds herself beside the body of her husband, gravely wounded and seemingly in a coma. > Outside, a little shooting, a little praying, a little silence... the room is small. Rectangular. It is suffocating, despite the pale walls... the room is empty. Empty of all ornament . In a claustrophobic situation, isolated from the world and at the same time immersed in the

> She who would one day become The Greatest tripped over a stool left in the way. (...) Three bowls crashed to the floor, shattering instantly. The fourth, however, hovered a palm’s width from the ground: a young boy stretched out his leg and managed to catch it, in perfect balance, in the hollow between his foot and ankle. It was thus that Shi Yu saw Li Wei for the first time. In these few clear

Ken Follett imagines finding a box buried in the garden of the house where he has just moved. Inside, engraved on a collar, he discovers this inscription: > this man is the property of Sir George Jamisson, year 1767.(...) if the steel collar could speak,(...) what story would it tell? From this opening, reminiscent of the discovery of buried treasure, begins a tale that aspires to be historical

The novel is set in England and Italy. Isabel is a young American woman who, having been left an orphan, moves to England to live with her aunt and the latter's husband, an exceedingly wealthy banker. She befriends her cousin, Ralph, who is, however, an invalid; she also receives two marriage proposals—one from a very wealthy lord and another from a young, promising American entrepreneur—both of

Stanislao is the great-nephew of Ippolito Nievo: writer, poet, and great patriot of the Risorgimento, who died at the age of 29. To Ippolito we owe one of the masterpieces of our nineteenth-century literature: *Le Confessioni di un italiano*, the review of which is available on this site. On March 4, 1861, the steamship Ercole, having departed from Palermo for Naples with Ippolito on board, vanish

In early nineteenth-century English society, what matters are the rules of polite society: courteous and amiable manners, marriageable young women of moderate education, and advantageous marriages that offer the prospect of stability and prosperity. Appearance, much like money, reigns supreme. Two characters stand as exceptions to these two golden rules: Elizabeth, the second of five sisters fro