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Conversations in Sicily

By Elio Vittorini

(4)

| Paperback | 9781841954509

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Book Description

Conversations in Sicily, now published by New Directions in a new translation, holds a special place in the annals of literature. 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 styContinue

Conversations in Sicily, now published by New Directions in a new translation, holds a special place in the annals of literature. 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 ã 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."

Critics

  • Appointment with the knife-grinder

    Conversations in Sicily by Elio Vittorini, translated by Alane Salierno Mason 208pp, Canongate, £8.99 Sometimes timeless books can also be timely. "I was in the grip of abstract furies. I won't be more specific, that's not what I've set out to relate ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • Listen with Madre

    Conversations in Sicily by Elio Vittorini translated by Alane Serlierno Mason Canongate £8.99, pp205 Ernest Hemingway thought Elio Vittorini was the business. 'One of the very best,' he wrote in his foreword to the first English translation of Conver ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

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Book Details

  • Rating:
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  • English Books
  • Paperback 224 Pages
  • Edition: New Ed
  • ISBN-10: 1841954500
  • ISBN-13: 9781841954509
  • Publisher: Canongate Books Ltd
  • Pub date: Sep 02, 2004
  • Dimensions: 1226 mm x 839 mm x 129 mm Just how big is that?
  • Also available as: Others
  • In other languages: other languages Libri Italiani
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