| Conversations in Sicily Contributor(s): Vittorini, Elio (Author), Mason, Alane Salierno (Translator), Hemingway, Ernest (Foreword by) |
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ISBN: 0811214559 ISBN-13: 9780811214551 Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation OUR PRICE: $14.36 Product Type: Paperback Published: December 2000 Annotation: Conversations in Sicily, now being published by New Directions in a new translation, holds a unique place in the annals of Italian literature. It stands as a modern classic not only for being a tale well told but also as a trailblazer for its style, which steered young Italian writers away from the then-prevailing cadenced and rarified prose towards the more muscular American tradition. When Hemingway wrote in introduction for the American debut of Conversations (New Directions, 1949), he remarked: "I care very much about Vittorini's ability to bring rain with him when he comes, if the earth is dry and that is what you need". It was what the partisans and passive resisters needed in those World War II days and they found it in this book. Indeed, many of those in hiding assumed the names of Vittorini's characters. In 1943 Vittorini was jailed by the fascist police for this very novel which had circulated widely even before its 1941 publication. The novel is about a journey back to roots. A successful but troubled businessman learns that his father has deserted his mother, leaving her on her own on the outskirts of a primitive Sicilian village. The narrator has not been back to Sicily for years. On his journey he reconnects with his past and encountering the Sicilian countryside and the people with their robust character and earthy ways -- his redoubtable mother in particular -- he rediscovers himself and the basic values of life. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary |
| Dewey: FIC |
| LCCN: 00036092 |
| Series: New Directions Paperbook |
| Physical Information: 0.57" H x 5.21" W x 7.93" (0.50 lbs) 202 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: It stands as a modern classic not only for its powerful thematic resonance as one of the great novels of Italian anti-fascism but also as a trailblazer for its style, which blends literary modernism with the pre-modern fable in a prose of lyric beauty. Comparing Vittorini's work to Picasso's, Italo Calvino described Conversations as the book-Guernica. The novel begins at a time in the narrator's life when nothing seems to matter; whether he is reading newspaper posters blaring of wartime massacres, lying in bed with his wife or girlfriend, or flipping through the pages of a dictionary it is all the same to him--until he embarks on a journey back to Sicily, the home he has not seen in some fifteen years. In traveling through the Sicilian countryside and in variously hilarious and tragic conversations with its people--his indomitable mother in particular--he reconnects with his roots and rediscovers some basic human values. In the introduction Hemingway wrote for the American debut of Conversations (published as In Sicily by New Directions in 1949) he remarked: I care very much about Vittorini's ability to bring rain with him when he comes, if the earth is dry and that is what you need. More recently, American critic Donald Heiney wrote that in this one book, Vittorini like Rabelais and Cervantes...adds a new artistic dimension to the history of literature. |