The story is set in Sicily and told by Elisa, orphaned young and raised by a "fallen woman." For years Elisa has lived in an imaginary world of her own; now, however, her guardian has died, and the young woman feels that she must abandon her fantasy life to confront the truth of her family's tortured and dramatic history. Elisa is a seductive, if less than reliable, spinner of stories, and the reader is drawn into a tale of secrets, intrigue, and treachery, which, as it proceeds, is increasingly revealed to be an exploration of a legacy of political and social injustice. Throughout, Morante's elegant writing--and her drive to get at the heart of her characters' complex relationships and all-too self-destructive behavior--holds us spellbound.
Product Details
ISBN-13: 9781681376844
Media Type: Paperback
Publisher: New York Review Books
Publication Date: 10-10-2023
Pages: 800
Product Dimensions: 5.00(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.70(d)
About the Author
Elsa Morante (1912–1985) was an Italian novelist, poet, and translator. She was born in Rome and lived there nearly all her life. In 1941, she published her first collection of stories and married the novelist Alberto Moravia. Morante is best known for her novels Arturo’s Island and La Storia. For her work, she was awarded both the Viareggio Prize and the Strega Prize. Jenny McPhee is a translator and the author of the novels The Center of Things, No Ordinary Matter, and A Man of No Moon. For NYRB Classics she translted Curzio Malaparte’s The Kremlin Ball and Natalia Ginzburg’s Family Lexicon. She is the director for the Center of Applied Liberal Arts at New York University.