That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana

Author: Carlo Emilio Gadda
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 9781590172223
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 420

Book Description
In a large apartment house in central Rome, two crimes are committed within a matter of days: a burglary, in which a good deal of money and precious jewels are taken, and a murder, as a young woman whose husband is out of town is found with her throat cut. Called in to investigate, melancholy Detective Ciccio, a secret admirer of the murdered woman and a friend of her husband’s, discovers that almost everyone in the apartment building is somehow involved in the case, and with each new development the mystery only deepens and broadens. Gadda’s sublimely different detective story presents a scathing picture of fascist Italy while tracking the elusiveness of the truth, the impossibility of proof, and the infinite complexity of the workings of fate, showing how they come into conflict with the demands of justice and love. Italo Calvino, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and Alberto Moravia all considered That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana to be the great modern Italian novel. Unquestionably, it is a work of universal significance and protean genius: a rich social novel, a comic opera, an act of political resistance, a blazing feat of baroque wordplay, and a haunting story of life and death.

The Experience of Pain

Author: Carlo Emilio Gadda
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141395664
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Book Description
'The seething cauldron of life, the infinite stratification of reality, the inextricable tangle of knowledge are what Gadda wants to depict' Italo Calvino At the height of Fascist rule in Italy and following the death of his mother, Carlo Emilio Gadda began work on his first novel, The Experience of Pain. This portrait of a highly educated young man whose anger and frustration frequently erupt in ferocious outbursts directed towards his ageing mother is a powerful critique of the society of his time and the deep wounds inflicted on his generation. Set in a fictional South American country, The Experience of Pain is at once richly imaginative and intensely personal: the perfect introduction to Gadda's innovative style and literary virtuosity. Translated by Richard Dixon

Hard Rain Falling

Author: Don Carpenter
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590173902
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
A hardboiled novel about life in the American underground, from the pool halls of Portland to the cells of San Quentin. Simply one of the finest books ever written about being down on your luck. Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling is a tough-as-nails account of being down and out, but never down for good—a Dostoyevskian tale of crime, punishment, and the pursuit of an ever-elusive redemption. The novel follows the adventures of Jack Levitt, an orphaned teenager living off his wits in the fleabag hotels and seedy pool halls of Portland, Oregon. Jack befriends Billy Lancing, a young black runaway and pool hustler extraordinaire. A heist gone wrong gets Jack sent to reform school, from which he emerges embittered by abuse and solitary conﬁnement. In the meantime Billy has joined the middle class—married, fathered a son, acquired a business and a mistress. But neither Jack nor Billy can escape their troubled pasts, and they will meet again in San Quentin before their strange double drama comes to a violent and revelatory end.

Black Wings Has My Angel

Author: Elliott Chaze
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
ISBN: 0486824055
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 179

Book Description
Originally published: Gold Medal Books, New York, 1953.

Acquainted with Grief

Author: Carlo Emilio Gadda
Publisher: Peter Owen Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
"Acquainted with Grief, written between 1938 and 1941, begins as a charade (what is the significance of the strange mock-Spanish dictatorship that serves as the story's locale: Mussolini's Italy in harmless disguise?). It proceeds sinuously while various provincial characters drift past and around the principal players--Gonzalo, the misanthropic bachelor and his poor fluttery mother caught in a web of social pretensions. By the close there is a terrible cry of death and despair not unworthy of the culmination of a Pirandello play. One can look at this bizarre novel as a symbolic attack on Fascism (later corroborated in Gadda's That Awful Mess on Via Merulana) but, as the introductory note makes clear, Gadda is really working out a private obsession-the Oedipal situation of his own life. And the long sequence where the villagers enter the deserted villa and discover the bloody Senora perhaps "murdered" by her departed son has a hallucinatory poignancy shocking in its nakedness, moral and otherwise. Here Gadda strikes through his lordly mask and speaks with true power." (Kirkus Review, March 1, 1969)

Fatale

Author: Jean-Patrick Manchette
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590175727
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 113

Book Description
A New York Review Books Original Whether you call her a coldhearted grifter or the soul of modern capitalism, there’s no question that Aimée is a killer and a more than professional one. Now she’s set her eyes on a backwater burg—where, while posing as an innocent (albeit drop-dead gorgeous) newcomer to town, she means to sniff out old grudges and engineer new opportunities, deftly playing different people and different interests against each other the better, as always, to make a killing. But then something snaps: the master manipulator falls prey to a pure and wayward passion. Aimée has become the avenging angel of her own nihilism, exacting the destruction of a whole society of destroyers. An unholy original, Jean-Patrick Manchette transformed the modern detective novel into a weapon of gleeful satire and anarchic fun. In Fatale he mixes equal measures of farce, mayhem, and madness to prepare a rare literary cocktail that packs a devastating punch.

The Iguana

Author: Anna Maria Ortese
Publisher: Kingston, N.Y. : McPherson
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Book Description
In this magical novel a count from Milan stumbles upon a desolate community of lost noblemen on an uncharted island off the coast of Portugal. When he discovers, to his astonishment, that their ill-treated servant is in fact a maiden iguana, and then proceeds to fall in love with her, the reader is given a fantastic tale of tragic love and delusion that ranks among the most affecting in contemporary literature. "The reptilian servant is only the first in a series of fantastic touches that tansform the narrative into a satiric fable dense with the echoes of Shakespeare's 'Tempest' and Kafka's 'Metamorphosis.' . . . The Iguana is a superb performance.""€"New York Times Book Review

The Road to San Giovanni

Author: Italo Calvino
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544146522
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Book Description
Heartfelt, affecting, and wise, the essay collection The Road to San Giovanni offers Italo Calvino's reflections on his own life and work in five elegant memory exercises.

The Hero's Way

Author: Tim Parks
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1324021969
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The acclaimed author of Italian Ways returns with an exploration into Italy’s past and present—following in the footsteps of Garibaldi’s famed 250-mile journey across the Apennines. In the summer of 1849, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Italy’s legendary revolutionary, was finally forced to abandon his defense of Rome. He and his men had held the besieged city for four long months, but now it was clear that only surrender would prevent slaughter and destruction at the hands of a huge French army. Against all odds, Garibaldi was determined to turn defeat into moral victory. On the evening of July 2, riding alongside his pregnant wife, Anita, he led 4,000 hastily assembled men to continue the struggle for national independence elsewhere. Hounded by both French and Austrian armies, the garibaldini marched hundreds of miles across the Appenines, Italy’s mountainous spine, and after two months of skirmishes and adventures arrived in Ravenna with just 250 survivors. Best-selling author Tim Parks, together with his partner Eleonora, set out in the blazing summer of 2019 to follow Garibaldi and Anita’s arduous journey through the heart of Italy. In The Hero’s Way he delivers a superb travelogue that captures Garibaldi’s determination, creativity, reckless courage, and profound belief. And he provides a fascinating portrait of Italy then and now, filled with unforgettable observations of Italian life and landscape, politics, and people.

The Pine Barrens Stratagem

Author: Ken Harris
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781684338719
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Book Description
Private Investigator Steve Rockfish needs cash, like yesterday. The bad news is that yesterday, a global pandemic raged, and Maryland was headed toward a lockdown that would ultimately lead to cheating spouses no longer "working late," and hence a lack of new clients. Rockfish's luck changes when a Hollywood producer reaches out, but the job is two states away and involves digging up information on a child trafficking ring from the 1940s. What he uncovers will be used to support the launch of a true crime docuseries. He grabs a mask, hand sanitizer and heads for South Jersey. On-site, Rockfish meets Jawnie McGee, the great granddaughter of a local policeman gone missing while investigating the original crimes. As the duo uncover more clues, they learn the same criminal alliance has reformed to use the pandemic as a conduit to defraud the Federal Government of that sweet, sweet, stimulus money. It's not long before the investigation turns up some key intel on a myriad of illicit activity over the last eighty years and Rockfish rockets toward a showdown with the mafia, local archdiocese and dirty cops. COVID-19 isn't the only threat to his health.