Synopses & Reviews
The secular and the pious. The rich and the poor. Those with a capacity for destiny” and those who cannot afford it.”
Emmaus is a world of stark contrasts, one in which four young menall from proud, struggling families, and all lusting after Andre, a hyper- sexual womanare goaded from adolescence to manhood in a torrent of exploits and crises, sexual awakenings and morbid depressions, naivety and fatalism.
A brilliant portrait of the perils and uncertainties of youth and faith, Emmaus is a remarkable novel from one of the very best writers in Europe.
Review
"Alessandro Baricco's new novel is about religion and sin, the sacred and the blasphemous, but perhaps above all about life, about the complicated and painful ways in which we approach it, the prices we pay, the losses and gains that add up to a figure that is always open-ended. It's an eternal storynot new yet always containing original elements that can render it authentic, possible, verifiable, if we know how to see it."
Il Mattino
"Emmaus is a book about how difficult it is to see truly, in all times and in our own time. Thus it is the story of a fictionthat is to say a universe molded over timethat shatters under pressure of the cruelties of truth. But, at the same time, it is also the story of how, amid the ruins, the confusing world of resurrection appears."
La Repubblica
"A short, haunting philosophical novel."
Shelf Awareness
"Darkly beautiful."
Hey Small Press!
The haunting prose is soaked in a poetic sense of doom and brokenness, a hard-edged working-class lyricism reminiscent of Tillie Olsons dustbowl classic Yonnondio.”
The Daily Beast
A riveting read”Switchback Journal
"Its the sinister caprice with which he and his characters seem to take in blowing out their fine lines that takes this from being a beautifully written novel, to being a beautifully human novel." City Book Review
Synopsis
The Italy of Alessandro Baricco's
Emmaus is one of stark contrasts: the secular and the pious, the rich and the poor, those with "a capacity for destiny" and those who "cannot afford it." And it's in all of the latter that we find our four protagonists: Bobby, the Saint, Luca, and the unnamed narratorall devout Catholics, all from proud, struggling families, and all lusting after one hyper-sexual woman. Andre, a woman whose reckless exploits border on suicidal, leads these four friends from adolescence to manhood in a torrid and existentially confused mess of emotions.
Baricco's lucid prose moves effortlessly from the abstract to the specific, while his Lolita-esque beginning takes a sharp turn towards an unsettling world reminiscent of Bolano's best work. A brilliant portrait of the perils and uncertainties of youth and faith, Emmaus is a remarkable novel from one of the very best writers in Italy.
Synopsis
The Italy of Alessandro Bariccos
Emmaus is one of stark contrasts: the secular and the pious, the rich and the poor, those with a capacity for destiny” and those who cannot afford it.” And its in the religiously devout lower-class that we find our four protagonists: Bobby, the Saint, Luca, and the unnamed narratorall from proud, struggling families, and all lusting after Andre, a hyper-sexual woman whose reckless, provocative exploits goad these four friends from adolescence to manhood.
Baricco renders the details of post-war, working-class Italian life with a poets eye, moving effortlessly from the quotidian to the profound. A brilliant portrait of the perils and uncertainties of youth and faith, Emmaus is a remarkable novel from one of the very best writers in Europe.
About the Author
Alessandro Baricco is an Italian writer, director, and performer. He has won the Prix Médicis Étranger in France and the Selezione Campiello, Viareggio, and Palazzo al Bosco prizes in Italy.
Ann Goldstein is an editor at The New Yorker. She has translated three novels by Elena FerranteThe Days of Abandonment, Troubling Love, The Lost DaughterClash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio, The Chill by Romano Bilenchi, The Father and the Stranger by Giancarlo de Cataldo, and The Worst Intentions by Alessandro Piperno. Her translation of Linda Ferri's Cecilia is forthcoming in May 2010. She received a PEN Renato Poggioli Translation Award and was a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome. She is currently editing the complete works of Primo Levi, for which she received a Guggenheim Translation fellowship. She lives in New York.