Isbn world rights / Italian Novecento
Italian Novecento aroses from the need to reconsider and revivify «contemporary classics», those great books by great authors which appeared during the 20th Century and were withdrawn from bookstore shelves for a number of reasons or were deliberately neglected, perhaps because of an obsession with the present and presentness. The selection was therefore based on topical and vital themes: although they have reached «maturity» since the first edition, those themes are still relevant in today’s society, which looks very much the same. They tell of moral, civil, religious needs that have not been forgotten, while they have inevitably changed their value and meaning.
Guido Davico Bonino (1938) teaches Teather History at the Turin University. He was editor at Einaudi, theater critic for La Stampa and worked for the Italian public broadcasting service. He directed the Teatro Stabile of Turin from 1994 to 1997.
Oreste del Buono
EASY TO USE / Facile da usare
novel
128 pages | May 2009
Afterword by Ermanno Paccagnini
His relentless analysis and unquenchable thirst for knowledge are rarely found in Italian contemporary fiction – ALBERTO ASOR ROSA
Five minimal and bare short stories “in continuity”. A short novel in reverse, describing the most bourgeois of love triangles and the feeble logic of desertion in someone who may have chosen to give up love. In Easy to Use Oreste Del Buono takes micro-existences apart and puts them back together, x-rays them, spots their most trivial inconsistencies and makes a point of magnifying them to show how they can turn into dangerous frustrations or become manic fixations. Small everyday details are exaggerated so that they can be transcended, and more attention can be paid to feelings. The style of the book is accommodating, as is someone who chooses compassion over indignation not as a means to commiserate man, but to resist with him, if possible.
Oreste del Buono (1923-2003) was a writer, translator of authors including Proust, Maupassant, Flaubert, editor and one of the first critics to acknowledge the aesthetic value of comic strips. He was the first director of Linus magazine, and worked for a number of newspapers and magazines including Corriere della Sera, La Stampa and Panorama. His work was translated in English, Spanish and French language.
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Paola Masino
BIRTH AND DEATH OF THE HOUSEWIFE / Nascita e morte della massaia
novel
304 pages | May 2009
Afterword by Marina Zancan
“Tragic tension and spirit of rebellion fuse with satire (with the housewife licking the floor to check its cleanliness) and an experimental tinge” – CORRIERE DELLA SERA
Birth and Death of the Housewife tells the story of the meaningless and shallow existence woman was forced to lead at the time, and considers the role imposed upon her by society and family.
Paola Masino’s discourse challenges patriarchal authority and the representation of models of femininity by putting into question the ideology of the woman-mother/caretaker of family and angel of domesticity promoted by the Fascist regime. In her subtly humorous style, halfway between fairy tales and real life, draws a metaphysical and surreal portrait of a pioneering feminism.
Because of her strong experimental writing – from surrealism to magic realism, from the absurd to the grotesque – her narrative was qualified as "defeatist" by the Fascist regime and she was personally criticized for "writing like a man".
Paola Masino (1908-1989) author of dramas, novels and short stories, wrote for numerous magazines, including 900, Epoca and Il Tempo. She met Massimo Bontempelli in 1927; their romantic and professional partnership would last throughout their lives, although it raised quite a few eyebrows in the Fascist regime and came in for severe censure. Her novels also include Monte Ignoso (1931) and Periferia (1933) and are translated in English and German.
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Guido Cavani
ZEBIO COTAL
novel
256 pages | May 2009
Afterword by Guido Davico Bonino
“The rural novel Zebio Còtal is a small masterpiece. A highly literary book, it i san extreme, exhausted product of Verga’s Verism” – PIER PAOLO PASOLINI
Zebio, an Italian peasant, seems to be a shrewd, violent and vicious man. He lives in Pazzano, on the hills near Modena, in a farming family of six dogged by bad luck: Zuello, his first son, runs away from home; another son, Bianco, and Zebio’s wife die; yet another son, Pellegrino, vanishes for no apparent reason. Zebio, hounded by creditors and detested by his neighbors, flees into the wilderness and ends up straying in the chilly Appennines. Zebio Còtal is not a naturalist tranche de vie, but the apology of a desperate loneliness opposing people and things, at the risk one’s very life. In a masterful style both in the lyrical description of nature and in capturing the degradation of soul, Guido Cavani tells the story of the black-and-white asceticism of a menacing and ruthless man, who gains the reader’s sympathy in the end.
Guido Cavani (1897-1967) was a poet and narrator from Modena. In 1958 published as few as 200 copies of Zebio Còtal at his expense. The book, widely considered his masterpiece, was re-published by Feltrinelli in 1961 with a foreword by Pier Paolo Pasolini.
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Massimo Bontempelli
THE INTENSE LIFE / La vita intensa
novel
192 pages | November 2009
Afterword by Alessandro Tinterri
“True to his dimension, Bontempelli supplies everything needed to prove a surprising ebullience, or to be mor eprecise, his ability to react to the purity, the chemical purity, of life itself” – CARLO BO
In 1919, life in Milan is already intense. Italy’s vicecapital is populated by frenetic and aimlessly wandering silhouettes of characters, portrayed in their frenzied – and even ludicrous – attempt to go about their activities, be it practical occupations or mere ego diversions: a lady tobacconist, a gentleman with a suitcase, a jealous woman, a proof-reader. As a narrating voice assembles, disassembles and reassembles the actions of these characters in a sort of meta-novel, a tableau vivant of personalities and narrative techniques is put on stage, whose perceptive and pointed parody by Massimo Bontempelli disintegrates the ideological fabric of an era, and reveals the foibles that still plague man. Its avantgardism, not just a formal one, makes The Intense Life one of the most successfully experimental works in twentieth-century literature.
Massimo Bontempelli (1878-1960) Was a teacher, journalist, narrator, poet, playwright, critic and essayist. The theorist of «magical realism» in Italy, he founded a journal, «900», Cahiers d’Italie et d’Europe, with Curzio Malaparte. His last book, The Faithful Lover won him the Premio Strega in 1953. His work was translated in English (Host Publications, Faber & Faber, MacPherson & Co. Paul Dry Books), Spanish (Ediciones B.), German (Steidl) and French (Christian Bourgois, Serpent à Plumes, Albin Michel, Gallimard, PU de Caen).
Previous foreign editions of this book:
La vie intense, Gallimard, 1990.
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Sergio Antonielli
CAMP 29 / Il campo 29
novel
256 pages | November 2009
Afterword by Edoardo Esposito
“We have rarely seen a literary document of such raw power and painful passion” – GIACINTO SPAGNOLETTA
“India becomes a mythical backdrop to this drama of elementary impulses, the mystery of instincts and the seminal reasons for human behavior” – VITTORIO SERENI
Camp 29 is the account of a lesser-known historical event. During WW2, about 10,000 Italian soldiers were concentrated in four camps in Yol, at the foot of the Himalayan range. They were Camps 25, 26, 27 and 28. Camp 29 was not an actual camp. It was a term used in the inmates’ jargon when someone died. "He went to the 29." Sergio Antonielli describes the physical pain – the malnutrition, the barbed-wire fever, the unbearable heat – but mainly focuses on the account of imprisonment as a living condition. The suspension of life in the camp, the hours spent resuming one’s activities where they had been left: A professor studying, a merchant doing business, a tailor cutting and sewing. This excruciating and fake collective play is an attempt to disguise the gradual annihilation of man and, if possible, to survive.
Sergio Antonielli (1920-1982) was an Italian writer and literary critic. His works of fiction include La tigre viziosa (1954), Un cane e un uomo in più (1958), Il venerabile orango (1962), Oppure, niente (1971).
Domenico Rea
JESUS, SHINE A LIGHT / Gesù, fate luce
short stories
160 pages | February 2010
First published in 1950 by Mondadori / Viareggio Prize 1951
Afterword by Domenico Scarpa
“Arguably, no other Italian writer today has this introspecting ability” – ALBERTO ASOR ROSA
“Meaty, ruddy, baroque, glamorous and flashy.[...] A piece of “magnesiumflash” writing, a Caravaggesque illumination of the eternal city of Naples. Lights, shadows, loss, ecstasy, violence and perdition” – IL MATTINO
Nofi, Naples and its surroundings, in the time between Fascism and the departure of the Allies from Southern Italy: this is the backdrop for the twelve stories included in this collection. First published in 1950, these stories describe grieving and weary characters in their everyday lives: a couple fighting in an unseemly way, a fake cripple who scrapes a living under the Fascists, a beggar who steals from a convent’s cellar to feed his family, a peasant’s wild and wanton passion for a girl his age.
In his coarse but anxious writing, Domenico Rea focuses alternatively on the look of a man, the tension in a feeling, the voices in a courtyard. Every one of his stories straddles the fine line between tragic and comic.
Domenico Rea (Naples, 1921 – 1994) was a factory worker, a stenographer, a proofreader. He later worked for some newspapers, including La Repubblica and Il Mattino, as well as the Italian public broadcasting company Rai.
Previous foreign editions of this book:
Jésus, fais la lumière, Actes Sud, 1989 (France).
Renzo Rosso
THE HARD THORN / La dura spina
novel
352 pages | January 2010
Afterword by Anco Marzio Mutterle
“Renzo Rosso can capture the essence of a man or a situation with just a few words, using no artifices, in a conspicuous style” – TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
“A perceptive and refined narrator, the author looks into human contradictions with millions of eyes taking a 360-degree look at the world” – ITALO CALVINO
“Its story proves the author’s umbilical relationship with Italo Svevo’s characters and atmospheres” – IL PICCOLO
“My heart bleeds / as any other heart. / The hard thorn that love inflicted to me / I carry it everywhere…” A poem by Umberto Saba gave the title to this novel by his fellow townsman Renzo Rosso. A famed pianist in his sixties, Ermanno Cornelis is back in Triest for a concert. But what he finds is a city in disarray, so rough and concrete that he cannot deny the decline of his artistic and physical performance much longer: the sex with young Giuliana is no exception.
La dura spina is a private and intimate story about the somber and unpleasant realization of aging. It is told in an eagerly matter-of-factly and perceptive way, and its consummate precision is reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s bourgeois interiors.
Renzo Rosso (Trieste, 1926 – Tivoli 2009) pursued musical studies from his childhood, following his mother’s wish. With a diploma in violin performance under his belt, he graduated in Philosophy. In 1951 he moved to Rome, where he has lived since, to work for RAI, the public Italian broadcaster. He also worked as a playwright. A pivotal encounter with Gadda started his career as a writer.
Previous foreign editions of this book:
The Hard Thorn, Alan Ross LTD, 1966 (UK)
La Dura Spinae, Nanteuil, 1965 (France)
La Dura Espina, Seix barral, 1967 (Spain)
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