{"product_id":"stories-of-southern-italy-isbn-9780593535516","title":"Stories of Southern Italy","description":"\u003cb\u003eThis dazzling hardcover collection brings to life the magnificent southern regions of Italy, from Naples to Sicily, as seen through the eyes of literary greats from Ovid and Virgil to Elsa Morante and Elena Ferrante.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSouthern Italy has long inspired one of the most vigorous literary traditions in Europe. Visitors since antiquity have sought to capture the extraordinary natural beauty and cultural riches of the region, and in this wide-ranging collection such notable foreign visitors as Goethe and Somerset Maugham sit alongside many of Italy’s finest writers, including Luigi Pirandello, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Elio Vittorini, and Anna Maria Ortese.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe stories here range across the regions of Sicily, Calabria, Campania, Apulia, and Basilicata. Theocritus, Virgil, and Ovid describe a Sicily populated by Cyclopes and sea monsters. In an excerpt from \u003ci\u003eThe Smile of the Unknown Mariner,\u003c\/i\u003e Vincenzo Consolo depicts an island on the frontier of Italian unification. The South’s legendary legacy of organised crime enlivens the stories of Leonardo Sciascia and Joseph Conrad. Curzio Malaparte and Norman Lewis immortalize the wreckage of Naples and the indomitable spirit of its people during World War II, and Elena Ferrante gives us a spectacular portrait of a poor but vibrant Neapolitan neighborhood in an excerpt from the best-selling \u003ci\u003eMy Brilliant Friend. \u003c\/i\u003eCollectively, these entertaining tales provide a portal into a fascinating place in all its drama and beauty.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eEveryman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.Preface by Ella Carr\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMYTHOGRAPHY\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e THEOCRITUS, The Cyclops (Idyll XI) \u003cbr\u003e VIRGIL, Helenus Warning (from the \u003ci\u003eAeneid \u003c\/i\u003e) \u003cbr\u003e OVID, The Rape of Proserpina (from the \u003ci\u003eMetamorphoses\u003c\/i\u003e)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eSICILY\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e GIOVANNI VERGA, His Reverence \u003cbr\u003e LUIGI PIRANDELLO, Citrons from Sicily \u003cbr\u003e VITALIANO BRANCATI, My Grandfather\u003cbr\u003e ELIO VITTORINI, From \u003ci\u003eConversations in Sicily \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e GIUSEPPE TOMASI DI LAMPEDUSA, The Siren \u003cbr\u003e LEONARDO SCIASCIA, The Wine-Dark Sea \u003cbr\u003e VINCENZO CONSOLO, The Tree of the Four Oranges\u003cbr\u003e DACIA MARAINI, From \u003ci\u003eBagheria\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e PETER ROBB, A Market\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eCALABRIA\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e NORMAN DOUGLAS, Old Morano \u003cbr\u003e CORRADO ALVARO, From \u003ci\u003eRevolt in Aspromonte \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e VITO TETI, Clouds and Back Streets\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eBASILICATA\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e CARLO LEVI, From \u003ci\u003eChrist Stopped at Eboli\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eAPULIA\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e NICOLA LAGIOIA, From \u003ci\u003eFerocity\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eCAMPANIA\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, From \u003ci\u003eItalian Journey \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e JOSEPH CONRAD, Il Conde \u003cbr\u003e W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, The Lotus Eater \u003cbr\u003e CURZIO MALAPARTE, The Plague \u003cbr\u003e ANNA MARIA ORTESE, A Pair of Eyeglasses \u003cbr\u003e ELSA MORANTE, From \u003ci\u003eArturo’s Island \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e NORMAN LEWIS, From \u003ci\u003eNaples ’44 \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ELENA FERRANTE, From \u003ci\u003eMy Brilliant Friend \u003c\/i\u003eELLA CARR is an editor at Everyman's Library in the UK, and author of the guide \u003ci\u003eFlorence Walks\u003c\/i\u003e. She has contributed to a number of travel and hotel guides, and to publications including \u003ci\u003eThe Oldie\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eExberliner\u003c\/i\u003e. She is the editor of the Everyman's Library Pocket Classic collection \u003ci\u003eStories of Florence.\u003c\/i\u003ePreface by Ella Carr\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe story of Southern Italy, and perhaps the rest of Europe,\u003cbr\u003e begins in Sicily. It is, as Goethe put it, ‘the clue to everything’.\u003cbr\u003e Famed for its extreme natural beauty and proverbial fertility,\u003cbr\u003e no part of Europe has been dominated by a greater number\u003cbr\u003e of races – the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Byzantines,\u003cbr\u003e Arabs, Normans and Spanish among them – each of\u003cbr\u003e whom have left their traces in the island’s cultural DNA. As\u003cbr\u003e one of its greatest writers, Leonardo Sciascia, observed, the\u003cbr\u003e palimpsestic culture of Sicily can be seen as ‘a metaphor for\u003cbr\u003e the entire world’.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In his novel \u003ci\u003eThe Skin\u003c\/i\u003e, Curzio Malaparte attaches similar\u003cbr\u003e primordial significance to the ancient city of Naples: ‘that\u003cbr\u003e terrible, wonderful prototype of an unknown Europe, situated\u003cbr\u003e outside the realm of Cartesian logic – that \u003ci\u003eother \u003c\/i\u003eEurope\u003cbr\u003e of whose existence he [the American protagonist, Colonel\u003cbr\u003e Jack] had until that day had only a vague suspicion, and\u003cbr\u003e whose mysteries and secrets . . . filled him with a wondrous\u003cbr\u003e terror.’ This ‘wondrous terror’, I would argue, speaks to\u003cbr\u003e the baroque sensibility of the whole of Southern Italy. If\u003cbr\u003e Florence and Rome represent the light and reason of Italy’s\u003cbr\u003e Renaissance, the \u003ci\u003eMezzogiorno \u003c\/i\u003eis its primeval underbelly,\u003cbr\u003e both more beautiful and more terrible.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Southern Italy is characterized by extremes of light and\u003cbr\u003e dark, the unutterable beauty of its landscape sitting side by\u003cbr\u003e side with its legacy of violence and suffering. After Italian\u003cbr\u003e unification in 1871, the Southern economy suffered greatly;\u003cbr\u003e brigandage, poverty and organized crime, already longstanding\u003cbr\u003e issues, became entrenched, with economic difficulties\u003cbr\u003e persisting throughout the twentieth century.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e These poles of light and dark are reflected in the literature\u003cbr\u003e from this region. Like a Dutch \u003ci\u003evanitas \u003c\/i\u003eportrait, Peter Robb’s\u003cbr\u003e almost indecently voluptuous description of Palermo’s food\u003cbr\u003e market captures Sicily in all its unbridled vitality, while\u003cbr\u003e simultaneously auguring death and decay – a metaphor\u003cbr\u003e for the ever-present threat of the mafia. This double-edged\u003cbr\u003e sword of beauty and horror haunts many of the stories in this\u003cbr\u003e anthology, of Sciascia, Somerset Maugham, Dacia Maraini\u003cbr\u003e and Elena Ferrante among others, as do the themes of corruption,\u003cbr\u003e hardship and injustice.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Exile and return is another running theme. Vito Teti’s\u003cbr\u003e ‘Clouds and Back Streets’, based on his hometown in\u003cbr\u003e Calabria, explores the experience of being left behind following\u003cbr\u003e the mass emigration to \u003ci\u003ela merica \u003c\/i\u003ein the latter half\u003cbr\u003e of the twentieth century, which decimated much of the\u003cbr\u003e region and contributed to what Teti calls ‘the restless and\u003cbr\u003e precarious state of mind of the Calabrese, of being “here and\u003cbr\u003e elsewhere”’. Elio Vittorini’s \u003ci\u003eConversations in Sicily\u003c\/i\u003e, which\u003cbr\u003e follows the narrator’s return home after eighteen years away,\u003cbr\u003e is equally suffused with Proustian longing for a vanished\u003cbr\u003e world, and with the sounds and smells of Sicily.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The classical Greek inheritance of the \u003ci\u003eMezzogiorno \u003c\/i\u003eis\u003cbr\u003e evident in the stories of Malaparte, Lampedusa and Elsa\u003cbr\u003e Morante among others. In its earliest times, Southern Italy\u003cbr\u003e was said to be populated by gods and demi-gods, monsters\u003cbr\u003e and heroes, some of whom feature in the stories of Theocritus,\u003cbr\u003e Virgil and Ovid: the giant Typhoeus for example, on\u003cbr\u003e whose shoulders the island of Sicily creaks, the Cyclopes who\u003cbr\u003e inhabit the caves of Etna, as well as the infamous sea monsters\u003cbr\u003e Scylla and Charybdis located at the Straits of Messina.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e While the travel writing Southern Italy has inspired could\u003cbr\u003e have filled this anthology many times over, my focus was on\u003cbr\u003e native Southern Italian authors, with a sprinkling of notable\u003cbr\u003e exceptions. The literary centres of Sicily and Campania\u003cbr\u003e are inevitably over-represented, but I hope that the stories\u003cbr\u003e from Calabria, Basilicata and Apulia will give at least a taste\u003cbr\u003e of the literary character of these regions. By necessity, this\u003cbr\u003e anthology can only skim the surface of what Southern Italy\u003cbr\u003e has to offer, but I hope it will set the reader on course for an\u003cbr\u003e odyssey of discovery that endures well beyond the final page.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e --Ella Carr","brand":"Everyman's Library","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300557443301,"sku":"NP9780593535516","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593535516.jpg?v=1767737371","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/stories-of-southern-italy-isbn-9780593535516","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}