Tag: Italian Authors

The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories

The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories is an anthology of forty Italian short stories edited by Jhumpa Lahiri. It includes stories by such authors as Alberto Moravia, Natalia Ginzburg, Primo Levi, Italo Calvino (The Baron in the Trees), Elsa Morante (Arturo’s Island), Dino Buzzati (Catastrophe & Other Stories), Luigi Pirandello (Six Characters in Search of an Author), Cesare Pavese (The Moon and The Bonfire), and others. I am reviewing six of the short stories below, and they all seem to revolve around limitations, hardships or eccentricities.

Silence by Aldo Palazzeschi (translated by Erica Segre and Simon Carnell) – ★★★★1/2

“There was not a moment in the day when silence did not fill the place entirely; there was not a single nook or cranny that the silence had not filled with the imposing solemnity of its presence.” Eccentric, reclusive man Benedetto Vai seems to have taken a vow of silence because he does not utter even one word to anyone, not even to his housekeeper Leonia, and this state of affairs seems to have been ongoing for years and years. And, then, he starts to accumulate the finest cutlery that seems to exist in the world. Is he preparing for some feast, and will the house be finally filled with voices? Palazzeschi gets his reader’s attention effortlessly by presenting, and with much finesse, a very unusual character who has one strange lifelong whim. The melancholic cadence is not as strong, but there is still this clear message that, at times, the greatest fight in a person’s life is their fight with themselves.

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Italia Reading Challenge 2022

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Italy is such a historically and culturally rich country and there are/were so many great Italian authors – Alighieri Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolo Machiavelli, Alessandro Manzoni (The Betrothed), Cesare Pavese, Umberto Eco (Foucault’s Pendulum), Italo Calvino (The Baron in the Trees), to name just a few. Taking this into account and since I loved some Italian books I’ve read recently I’ve decided to make 2022 my year exploring Italian literature and set up the Italia (Italy) Reading Challenge (to run between January and December 2022). To make this challenge more manageable for myself, I have decided to limit my reading goal to just 10 books written by Italian authors. If we consider that these books all come from just one country, I don’t think it’s a bad start at all, and here is my selection for this year:

  • Alberto Moravia – Contempt/Boredom/The Time of Indifference
  • Antonio Tabucchi – Pereira Maintains
  • Primo Levi – If This is a Man/If Not Now, When?
  • Elena Ferrante – The Days of Abandonment
  • Leonardo Sciascia – To Each His Own
  • Giorgio Bassani – The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
  • Italo Svevo – Zeno’s Conscience
  • Dacia Maraini – The Silent Duchess
  • Elsa Morante – Arturo’s Island
  • Luigi Pirandello – The Late Mattia Pascal

Finally, if you want to join me on this journey this year (reading any number of books), you can grab the banner and leave links to your reviews throughout the year in the comments section on this permanent page – Italia Reading Challenge 2022 or below and I will add them to the general list, as well as do a summary post in December 2022 – #ReadItaliaChallenge.

Review: Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco

Foucault’s Pendulum [1988/89] – ★★★★

“…the important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little” [Umberto Eco/William Weaver, Vintage Press: 1988/89: 33].

Through one dense, rich and enigmatic narrative, Umberto Eco tells the story of Casaubon (our narrator) and his friendship with two employees of publishing house Garamond Press – Belbo and Diotallevi. This trio of intellectuals, who are simply in love with all kinds of knowledge, historic mysteries and brainy puzzles, start their own intellectual “game” of drawing connections with seemingly unrelated things using one clever word-processing machine and a suggestion from one Colonel Ardenti which concerns the order of the Knights Templar and perhaps mysterious resemblances. Little do they know that their amassed knowledge will be too diverse and their power of belief – too strong for a game which started on a whim and so childishly. When certain deaths and disappearances occur as they the trio’s search for their ultimate and absolute truth continues, it may be already too late to seek the way out. But is Eco’s story even about that? Perhaps it is about something else too, and about something else, and, equally, about something else. From the intellectual hub of Milan to esoteric, mysterious corners of Brazil, Umberto Eco takes the reader on one uncanny literary journey and presents a narrative which informs, surprises and exhilarates, as it also confounds, exhausts and overwhelms.

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Mini-Review: The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati

The Tartar Steppe [1940/2018] – ★★★★1/2

First published in 1940 and translated from the Italian by Stuart Hood, this novel is about young and idealistic Giovanni Drogo, a newly appointed Officer to Fort Bastiani, an obscure mountainous place near the country’s frontier. Drogo is excited about his first posting and hurries to his destination eagerly wanting to put to the test his soldiery skills, valour and discipline, as well as begin his new life. However, what awaits him is the unexpected: “the desolate steppe…which had mystery, but no meaning”, where “people [have] no knowledge of time” and where “everything [speaks] of renunciation” [Buzzati/Hood, 1945/1973: 22, 72, 82]. Fort Bastiani is a place in the middle of nowhere where no enemy has been seen since the time immemorial. Drogo soon feels rebellious, then depressed and lonely, and is finally completely enchanted by nothingness.

The Tartar Steppe is a masterful and subtle work which echoes the best work of Franz Kafka. It is a story about the traps that time lays to a man, about dashed hopes and missed life opportunities, and is a profound meditation on prisons that reside in the recesses of our own minds, in our beloved habits and dear ideals which we can never seem to cast aside no matter how nonsensical they may start to appear.

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