{"product_id":"crazy-genie-isbn-9798896230205","title":"Crazy Genie","description":"\u003cb\u003eA young girl clings fiercely to the damaged love of her mother—a taciturn farmworker cast out by her family and scorned by her village after giving birth out of wedlock—in this devastating and lyrically rendered novel from a French-Italian maverick.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMarie lives with her mother, Genie, in a ramshackle house by a willow-lined river in rural France. Every morning, Genie walks to the neighboring farms to do what work there is to be done. When farmers and villagers greet her, she says nothing, and keeps walking. Once, she was a lighthearted girl from the best family in the valley; now they all call her “Crazy Genie.” While her mother works, Marie waits, yearning for her mother to notice her, longing for the moment when they will be back in their lonely house by the river.\u003cbr\u003e    Told in Marie’s ingenuous, straightforward voice, \u003ci\u003eCrazy Genie \u003c\/i\u003eis the second novel by Inès Cagnati, who grew up in poverty in rural France in the 1940s, the child of Italian immigrant agricultural workers. Rich in observation and detail, and devastating in its portrayal of a child’s unconditional love and of society’s callous prejudices, \u003ci\u003eCrazy Genie\u003c\/i\u003e, together with her first novel, \u003ci\u003eFree Day\u003c\/i\u003e, confirms Cagnati's astonishing power as a writer.\"Part fairy tale, part incantation, this devastatingly beautiful story teeters between innocence and menace. The young narrator must interpret her elusive, impenetrable mother by paying vigilant close attention, and the result is a story of exquisite observation, taut with longing, in a landscape pulsing with terrors real and imagined. I held my breath until the final word.\" — Sonya Walger\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Inès Cagnati's debut \u003ci\u003eFree Day \u003c\/i\u003eis the only novel I recommend to everyone I know. I have prayed for another Cagnati translation, and I am grateful Liesl Schillinger has now brought \u003ci\u003eCrazy Genie \u003c\/i\u003eto us. Here Cagnati summons another unshakable voice to tell a story that is brutal, pure, and alive. Here is the violence of rural poverty and rejection. Here is how imagination survives.\" — Ashleigh Bryant Phillips\u003cb\u003eInès Cagnati\u003c\/b\u003e (1937–2007) was born in Monclar, France, and died in Orsay. The child  of Italian immigrants, she became a French citizen but never considered  herself French. With a bachelor’s degree in modern literature and a  certificate for secondary-school instruction, she worked as a professor  of literature at the Lycée Carnot in Paris. Cagnati was the author of  four prize-winning books, including \u003ci\u003eFree Day\u003c\/i\u003e (NYRB Classics).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLiesl Schillinger\u003c\/b\u003e is a literary critic, writer, and  translator, and teaches journalism and criticism at the Eugene Lang  College of Liberal Arts of the New School for Social Research in New  York City. For NYRB Classics, she translated Inès Cagnati’s \u003ci\u003eFree Day\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233054634213,"sku":"NP9798896230205","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9798896230205.jpg?v=1767724210","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/crazy-genie-isbn-9798896230205","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}