Synopses & Reviews
A witty and despairing classic of Italian literature, with a foreword by André Aciman
Anyway, it’s always like that. You do your best to keep to yourself and then, one fine day, you somehow find you’re caught up in something that sweeps you along with it to the bitter end.
In a city smothering under the summer sun and an overdose of la dolce vita, Leo Gazarra spends his time in an alcoholic haze, bouncing between run-down hotels and the homes of his rich and well-educated friends, without whom he would probably starve. At thirty, he's still drifting: between professions that mean nothing to him, between human relationships both ephemeral and frayed. Everyone he knows wants to graduate, get married, get rich — but not him. He has no ambitions whatsoever. Rather than toil and spin, isn't it better to submit to the sweet alienation of the Eternal City, Rome, sometimes a cruel and indifferent mistress, sometimes sweet and sublime. There can be no half-measures with her, either she’s the love of your life or you have to leave her.
First discovered by Natalia Ginzburg, Gianfranco Calligarich's Last Summer in the City is a forgotton classic of Italian literature, of a similar stature to The Great Gatsby or The Catcher in the Rye — and its recent reissue has brought with it comparisons to writers such as Capote, Hemingway, Franzen, and Moravia. Biting, tragic, endlessly quotable, it is at last making its debut in English translation, along with an introduction from longtime fan André Aciman.
Review
"Charming, decadent, and emotionally ruthless, Last Summer in the City is equal parts Fitzgerald and Antonioni, burrowing deep into the kind of unhappiness that can only be soothed by afternoon movies and very strong cocktails. It's wonderful to have this devastating gem at large in the world again." Andrew Martin, author of Cool for America
Review
"Calligarich's rendering turns la dolce vita into something more akin to Camus's L'Etranger in a contemporary-ish urban setting. Out of print for years, this welcome new translation is elegiac and heart-rending." Vogue (Best Books to Read This Summer 2021)
Review
"The account of a lost generation in Rome in the early 1970s (possibly the children of the children of Hemingway's lost generation) carries the weight of both family history and generational saga." Kirkus (starred review)
Review
"The true quality of this novel is the way it enlightens, with a desperate clarity, a relationship between a man and a city — that is, between crowd and loneliness." Natalia Ginzburg
About the Author
Gianfranco Calligarich was born in Asmara, Eritrea, and grew up in Milan before moving to Rome, where he worked as a journalist and screenwriter. He wrote many successful TV shows for RAI, the national public broadcasting company of Italy, and founded the Teatro XX Secolo in 1994. He is the author of many novels, including La malinconia dei Crusich, which was the winner of the Viareggio-Rèpaci Prize. Last Summer in the City is the first of his novels to be translated in English.
Howard Curtis lives in London and has translated more than sixty books from the French, Italian, and Spanish.