The novel of Ferrara
By: Giorgio Bassani ; translated by Jamie McKendrick ; foreword by Andre Aciman
Contributors: McKendrick, Jamie, 1955-
Edition: First American edition.
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 744
ISBN-13: 9780393080155
Subjects: World War, 1939-1945; Fiction
Work titles: Romanzo di Ferrara
Description: "Giorgio Bassani's six classic books, collected for the first time in English as the epic masterwork they were intended to be. Among the masters of twentieth-century literature, Giorgio Bassani and his Northern Italian hometown of Ferrara "are as inseparable as James Joyce and Dublin or Italo Svevo and Trieste" (from the Introduction). Now published in English for the first time as the unified masterwork Bassani intended, The Novel of Ferrara brings together Bassani's six classics, fully revised by the author at the end of his life: Within the Walls, The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Behind the Door, The Heron, and The Smell of Hay. Set in the northern Italian town of Ferrara before, during, and after the Second World War, these interlocking stories present a fully rounded world of unforgettable characters: the respected doctor whose homosexuality is tolerated until he is humiliatingly exposed by an exploitative youth; a survivor of the Nazi death camps whose neighbors' celebration of his return gradually turns to ostracism; a young man discovering the ugly, treacherous price that people will pay for a sense of belonging; the Jewish aristocrat whose social position has been erased; the indomitable schoolteacher, Clelia Trotti, whose Communist idealism disturbs and challenges a postwar generation. The Novel of Ferrara memorializes not only the Ferrarese people, but the city itself, which assumes a character and a voice deeply inflected by the Jewish community to which the narrator belongs. Suffused with new life by acclaimed translator and poet Jamie McKendrick, this seminal work seals Bassani's reputation as 'a quietly insistent chronicler of our age's various menaces to liberty' (Jonathan Keates)"--
Notes: "The complete masterpiece including, the Garden of the Finzi-Continis."

Translation from the Italian of: Il Romanzo di Ferrara.
Table of contents: title: Within the walls :; title: Lida Mantovani --; title: Stroll befor dinner --; title: Memorial tablet in Via Mazzini --; title: Final years of Clelia Trotti --; title: Night in 43' --; title: Gold-rimmed spectacles --; title: Garden of the Finzi-Continis --; title: Behind the door --; title: Heron -- -- Smell of hay :; title: Two fables --; title: Further news of Bruno Lattes --; title: Ravenna --; title: Les neiges d'Antan --; title: Three apologues --; title: Down there, at the end of the corridor.