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History

by Elsa Morante

History Cover

ISBN13: 9781586420048
ISBN10: 1586420046
All Product Details

 

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

History was written nearly thirty years after Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia spent a year in hiding among remote farming villages in the mountains south of Rome. There she witnessed the full impact of the war and first formed the ambition to write an account of what history - the great political events driven by men of power, wealth, and ambition - does when it reaches the realm of ordinary people struggling for life and bread.

The central character in this powerful and unforgiving novel is Ida Mancuso, a schoolteacher whose husband has died and whose feckless teenage son treats the war as his playground. A German soldier on his way to North Africa rapes her, falls in love with her, and leaves her pregnant with a boy whose survival becomes Ida's passion.

Around these two other characters come and go, each caught up by the war which is like a river in flood. We catch glimpses of bombing raids, street crimes, a cattle car from which human cries emerge, an Italian soldier succumbing to frostbite on the Russian front, the dumb endurance of peasants who have lived their whole lives with nothing and now must get by with less than nothing.

"One of the few novels in any language that renders the full horror of Hitler's war, the war that never gets into the books . . ."-- Alfred Kazan, Esquire

"A storyteller who spellbinds."-- Stephen Spender, The New York Review of Books

"A marvel of a novel . . . all the pleasures that fiction can offer."-- Doris Grumbach, Saturday Review

Synopsis:

During World War II, Elsa Morante and her husband, antifascist novelist Alberto Moravia, fled the German occupation in Italy. Out of this experience came History, the moving saga of a widow's courage.

About the Author

ELSA MORANTE was born in 1912 and raised in Rome. In 1941 she married the prominent author Alberto Moravia, whose anti-Fascist reputation forced them to flee the German occupation and hide in the mountains until the Liberation. During this time Morante began to write her first novel, House of Liars. She would complete three more major works during her career, winning the Premio Strega in 1957 for Arturo's Island. Her final novel, Aracoeli, earned her the Prix Medicis Etranger in 1985, the year of her death.

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:

geppy, January 18, 2009 (view all comments by geppy)
"History" was an extremely controversial but bestselling book when it appeared in 1974 in Italy. However, the polemics centered upon Morante's style and breaking with the literary ideals espoused at the time by the Marxist Italian literary establishment, rather than the historical content of the novel, which traces an Italian-Jewish family's struggles from the turn of the century through approx. the 1960s (when the last character dies). There is an interesting portrayal of the effect of the Italian racial laws of 1938 as well as of the notorious Oct. 1943 roundup of Rome's Jews. Morante, like her husband Alberto Moravia, was of Jewish background, so their flight from Rome in 1943 was not only for political reasons as the blurb (on the Powell's page describing "History) states. William Weaver is a renowned translator of Italian literature; I would recommend his other translations. However, Morante's first novel and indisputable masterpiece, "Menzogna e sortilegio", was translated very poorly into English as "House of Liars" and in fact was disowned by an extremely upset Morante, so unfortunately, I can't recommend reading "House of Liars." See William Weaver and Kristina Olson's "Open City: 7 Writers in Postwar Rome" for an excerpt in English of "Menzogna e sortilegio" as well as English excerpts from other key Italian authors.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9781586420048
Translator:
Weaver, William
Foreword:
Harrison, Barbara Grizzuti
Translator:
Weaver, William
Foreword by:
Harrison, Barbara Grizzuti
Foreword:
Harrison, Barbara Grizzuti
Author:
Weaver, William
Author:
Tuck, Lily
Author:
Morante, Elsa
Author:
Harrison, Barbara Grizutti
Publisher:
Zoland Books
Location:
South Royalton, Vt.
Subject:
General
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
World war, 1939-1945
Subject:
World War, 19
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Edition Number:
2
Edition Description:
Trade paper
Series Volume:
v. 2
Publication Date:
20000231
Binding:
TRADE PAPER
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
768
Dimensions:
8.49x5.52x1.68 in. 1.87 lbs.

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Product details 768 pages Steerforth Press - English 9781586420048 Reviews:
"Synopsis" by , During World War II, Elsa Morante and her husband, antifascist novelist Alberto Moravia, fled the German occupation in Italy. Out of this experience came History, the moving saga of a widow's courage.
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