Particularly reminiscent of Knut Hamsun's great novel Hunger, Conversations in Sicily is a strange, paradoxical work that echoes the existentialist concerns of Camus' fiction while capturing vividly the heat and sounds and smells of southern Italy. The novel begins at a time in the unnamed narrator's life when nothing seems to matter. He is filled with a deep sense of ennui and feels disconnected from all that surrounds him. That is until he embarks on a journey to Sicily, the home he has not seen in some fifteen years. Alane Mason's new translation succeeds wonderfully in bringing this evocative and brilliant novel alive. It is a superb work of fiction, one of the great novels of anti-fascism and a book that is sure to astound contemporary readers for its modernity, lyricism, originality and freshness
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* Superbly written ... Vittorini's unique prose laps against one in repetitious wavelets, alive to the rhythm and significance of language in a way more common to poetry than to prose. Praised in the past by writers like Ernest Hemingway and Italo Calvino, this new translation by Alane Mason restores a paint-fresh vividness to a classic novel, too-little known in the English speaking world. -- Wayne Burrows * Vittorini is one of the very best ... I care very much about his ability to bring rain with him when he comes, if the earth is dry and that is what you need. -- Ernest Hemmingway * It is very hard to give any adequate sense of [its] power, rendered in lucid, supple lines of almost Homeric simplicity whose cadences are faithfully captured in this excellent new translation Guardian * An extraordinary book ... For anyone interested in memory and place, the loss of the past and the attempt to recover it in words, this book will be rewarding ... giving the reader an experience that is vividly new, yet strangely familiar -- Kirsty Gunn
--This text refers to an alternate
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About the Author
ELIO VITTORINI was born in Siracusa, Sicily in 1908. An acclaimed translator (Defoe, Faulkner, Lawrence, Steinbeck and Somerset Maugham) and broadcaster and activist all his life, it wasn't until 1941 that Conversations in Sicily first appeared. A highly outspoken critic of Mussolini's and his fascist government, Vittorini was arrested and jailed in 1942. He died in 1966.
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THAT WINTER I WAS IN THE GRIP OF ABSTRACT FURIES. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
THAT WINTER I WAS IN THE GRIP OF ABSTRACT FURIES. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By moby-dick
Format:Paperback
I really liked this short book. It is a mixture of straightforward narrative, dream-like experiences and poetic symbolism.
The narrator is a Sicilian who left home at the age of fifteen and now, at the age of thirty, returns to pay his mother a visit. The evocation of his journey and the description of his experiences at his mother's village enable him not only to understand more about himself and his childhood, but also to express his criticism of fascism and war. I would definitely re-read this book, as I am sure it would reveal more of its meaning on a second reading.
The narrator is a Sicilian who left home at the age of fifteen and now, at the age of thirty, returns to pay his mother a visit. The evocation of his journey and the description of his experiences at his mother's village enable him not only to understand more about himself and his childhood, but also to express his criticism of fascism and war. I would definitely re-read this book, as I am sure it would reveal more of its meaning on a second reading.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By JoTownhead
Format:Paperback
Silvestro hears from his father that he has left his mother and suggests Silvestro visits her - after an absence of some 15 years. 'Conversations' follow with those he meets on the journey and at his destination. In parts this novel is beautifully descriptive. In others it is numbingly repetitive. Is it allegorical? If so, I'm afraid this was lost on me. Far from being the 'masterpiece' claimed I found it hard going and ultimately unsatisfying.
By GregP
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
I read this while I was in Sicily and so recognised some of the places and landscapes Vittorini describes and that may have influenced me in its favour. It is hard to categorise because it's not really a travel book as it describes a fictional journey and it is barely a novel as there is not much of a plot. It is really a series of reflections on the Sicily of half a century ago revealed mainly through the protagonist's conversations with the people he meets. To start with these conversations give an insight into the lives of ordinary Sicilians of the period but gradually they become more personal and even metaphysical culminating in a strange nocturnal meeting with a soldier. Now it seems Vittorini is more interested in exploring his own (?) life and relationships with his family.
Since reading the book a few weeks ago parts keep coming back to me, which must be a sign of a good book
Since reading the book a few weeks ago parts keep coming back to me, which must be a sign of a good book
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