Books & Reviews Archive

"Over everything lies a feeble, faded, sorrowful smile." This line by Ezra Zussman "in a poem about autumn evenings" encapsulates the meaning of this book: dense, gray, and seemingly mundane. Theo and Noa share an ordinary coexistence, made of small habits, silences, and fleeting moments of love. Both have led solitary, difficult lives. Having met by chance, they took refuge, in search of a fr

Eighteen years have passed. The writer recalls a great love—his love for Naoko. The novel is both a search for her memory and a journey of liberation from someone who dominated his life. Naoko’s figure has vanished from memory, but gradually her features resurface: > her cold little hands, that lovely straight hair so light to the touch, the soft, rounded earlobes with a small mole beneath...

The poem narrates the events of the war between Charlemagne and the Arabs, tracing the journey of Ruggiero, progenitor of the House of Este, toward the Christian faith and his allegiance to the Carolingian king. Alongside Ruggiero, the stories of the other characters unfold, weaving innumerable tales—some grafting onto the main plot, while others appear as seemingly random digressions. From read

In the first tale of *One Thousand and One Nights*, under the expressive title of *The Weaver of the Nights* (see review on this site), Scheherazade deceives the cruel sultan, bewitching him with wondrous and intriguing stories. It is the miracle of the word! Likewise, in this novel, Pari, an immigrant woman infatuated with the Dutch language, will save herself through writing. A Flemish healer en

The events between 8 September 1943 and February 1945 form the historical backdrop of the novel. These are the years of the partisan war. An officer cadet in Rome, Johnny left the army, like so many others following the announcement of the armistice and the ensuing general chaos. He returned home, to Alba. A young intellectual passionate about English literature, he belongs to a lower-middle-c

Questo autobiographical account of the Resistance shares the same beginning as other novels that chronicle the years of partisan warfare between 1943 and 1945: as in Fenoglio’s *Primavera di bellezza* or Lajolo’s *A conquistare la rossa primavera*, the protagonist is a young officer, waiting for heaven knows what. > Perhaps we will flicker out like this; then, once we are extinguished, the war t

How is it that a young man from a respectable Jewish family, enjoying an esteemed social standing, seeks out the most sordid and depraved sex instead of marrying young women from good bourgeois society, “with whom to raise intelligent, loving, and sturdy children”? > Dignity, Well-being, Love, Industry, Knowledge, Trust, Decency, High Principles, Compassion! Why the hell do I chase sensational s

I do not know whether anything exists in our literature quite like Thomas Mann’s novella *Death in Venice* (see the review on this site). Comisso's short piece recaptures much of the atmosphere of the great German writer's masterpiece. One senses the same oneiric anticipation of decay, voluptuous and melancholy. We are in Fiume, between 1919 and 1920: the city, sweet with the fragrance of jasmine,

Penn Cage, a former prosecutor and now a successful author, has recently lost his wife. To find himself again, he decides to spend some time with his parents in his hometown, a small town in Mississippi. It is like finding oneself > on the thin boundary of a universe of vibrant life and mysterious death, of hidden secrets and glittering facades, and of races inextricably bound by blood and tea

> For as I live this poor life of mine, I seem to brush past another as in sleep; and that that sleep is my present life (Camillo Sbarbaro). In a shattering world, is it possible to save oneself through fantasy, by conjuring up another reality? And in so doing, to elude death? Rushdie attempts to answer this question with a grand fresco: at its center lie the sources of our era's illusions, thos

This volume brings together Cesare Pavese’s short stories written between 1936 and 1946. Many of them had already been published, principally in the collection *Fiera dʼAgosto*, while others are unpublished, at times left unfinished. These are the years of the author’s imprisonment and internal exile, of the partisan war, and of the early postwar period. The earliest stories possess the structu

In the short story *Casa Luminosa*, a young migrant family has arrived in Rome, believing they have found a home where they can live in peace; but the neighbors, incited by the "crow-women," insult and threaten the harmless married couple. The wife returns to her native country while the husband stays in Italy. He goes into a bar and watches a gentleman quietly sipping a chinotto. > I must say I

In a celebrated ballata, Guido Cavalcanti sings of the pains of love: “this (is) a desperate and fierce torment,/which consumes and aches and burns and embitters”. Love does not bring happiness, especially if > I can find none of whom to beg for pity,/thanks to that lord/who turns the fortune of grief . This state of mind is depicted with melancholic sweetness by Cassola, and he does so from th

Defense attorney Guerrieri has just been left by his girlfriend when he is asked to represent on appeal a man named Paolicelli, who has already been convicted at first instance of international drug trafficking. From the name, Guerrieri recalls that he is a former fascist thug who took part in beating him during his student days. For this reason, he hesitates to take the case, but meeting the defe

The book brings together four short stories by young Russian writers who were children when the Soviet Union collapsed and are therefore utterly detached from the themes inherited from the fall of the empire. The stories exhibit entirely different styles and subjects, yet share a common motif: “the search for something we lack,” as concluded by Vladim, the protagonist of Savelyev’s short story, t

Jane Austen’s novels appear detached from their historical setting, the years between 1790 and 1815 marked by the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the protracted Napoleonic Wars. This “timeless” profile is corroborated by what Austen herself wrote to her niece: > three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on (*Austen’s Letters*, page 275, quotation cited by Kat

The novel opens in its initial chapters with two seemingly parallel storylines. On the one hand, it recounts the most pivotal episodes in the life of an adolescent, his circle of friends, and his neighborhood in Porto Alegre. The boy perpetually courts risk, yet fails to display genuine courage: thus, he does not come to the aid of a friend who is murdered by a rival gang. There emerges in the

> One of my earliest boasts had been my name. I had soon learned (it was he, I think, who first informed me of it) that Arturo is a star: the swiftest and most radiant in the figure of Boötes, in the northern sky!. Thus begins Arturo Gerace’s long quest for Love: > an indecipherable dilemma, without the solace of hope, or of revenge ; a quest that, to unfold, required an enchanted place like Pr

Elena continues the story of her friendship with Lila. The first book, *My Brilliant Friend*, had ended with Lila’s marriage to Stefano, the wealthy grocer. > I wanted to sink back into the neighborhood, to be as I had been. I wanted to throw away studying, the notebooks crammed with exercises. (...) What I could become outside Lila’s shadow counted for nothing. What was I compared to her in

With exceptional timing, in 1897 Salgari published a novel "of adventure and love" that recounts the Philippine Revolution between 1896 and 1898: a conflict between the Philippine independence movement and Spain, which would ultimately lead the latter to lose its colony. As had already occurred with Cuba during the Spanish-American War of 1898, recounted by Salgari in another novel (see the review

> Privatization, nationalization, savings incentives, spending stimulus, regulation, deregulation, fixed exchange rates, floating exchange rates, exchange controls, free currency exchange, more tariffs, fewer tariffs. And the net result: bankruptcy . We find ourselves in an imaginary America, governed by an authoritarian, police-state "bipartisan" regime in the throes of full economic and polit

Reviewing this novel was no easy task: the narrative strands are numerous, rich in literary, political, and philosophical references, and what is more, they succeed and overlap one another so as to create an often indecipherable tangle to which it is demanding to give an overarching meaning. It is easier to say what the book is not: its subject is not the Vietnam War, as numerous critics have supe

As Wikipedia notes, Murasaki Shikibu (973–1014) was a Japanese poet renowned for the epic *The Tale of Genji*, likely written around the year 1000 when she served as a lady-in-waiting. Murasaki (Japanese for violet) is the name of the novel's female protagonist—a name also attributed to the poet herself, as her real name remains unknown. *The Tale of Genji* quickly achieved widespread circulation,

For those of us who have dreamt of the battles and heroes of the *Iliad*, Gogol’s *Taras Bulba* recalls the great Homeric epic (see review on this site). There is a warrior people, the Cossacks, who arose from the “ancient, peaceful Slavic spirit” like a “burst of flame,” > an extraordinary manifestation of Russian strength, struck by the flint of misfortune from the breast of the nation. In pla