The Moon and the Bonfires
Published on 28. January 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
176 pages
978-0-241-37054-4 (ISBN)
Description
'Insinuating, haunting and lyrically pervasive' The New York Times Book Review
A new translation by Tim Parks
Twenty years after making his fortune in America, Eel is drawn back to the closest thing he has to a home: the Piedmontese countryside where he grew up poor and illegitimate. Wandering the valleys and vineyards with his childhood friend Nuto, Eel remembers the farm where he worked, his employer's beautiful daughters, the rituals of rural life. Yet as he discovers more about what happened there during the war, he realizes that these timeless landscapes hide terrible, savage secrets. By turns fond and evocative, seductive and troubling, The Moon and the Bonfires is a lyrical masterpiece of memory and betrayal.
Translated with an Introduction by Tim Parks
A new translation by Tim Parks
Twenty years after making his fortune in America, Eel is drawn back to the closest thing he has to a home: the Piedmontese countryside where he grew up poor and illegitimate. Wandering the valleys and vineyards with his childhood friend Nuto, Eel remembers the farm where he worked, his employer's beautiful daughters, the rituals of rural life. Yet as he discovers more about what happened there during the war, he realizes that these timeless landscapes hide terrible, savage secrets. By turns fond and evocative, seductive and troubling, The Moon and the Bonfires is a lyrical masterpiece of memory and betrayal.
Translated with an Introduction by Tim Parks
Reviews / Votes
Pavese is one of the few essential novelists of the mid-twentieth century -- Susan Sontag Pavese's nine short novels make up the most dense, dramatic, and homogeneous narrative cycle of modern Italy ... But above all they are works of an extraordinary depth where one never stops finding new levels, new meanings -- Italo Calvino Cesare Pavese's cool, contemplative voice was the most important among postwar Italian writers -- W. S. DiPiero Insinuating, haunting and lyrically pervasive * The New York Times Book Review * The Moon and the Bonfires [is Pavese's] masterpiece on the aftermath of the partisan war in the hills around Turin * The Daily Telegraph *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 131 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
136 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-241-37054-4 (9780241370544)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Cesare Pavese
The Moon and the Bonfires
E-Book
01/2021
1st Edition
Penguin Books Ltd
€8.49
Available for download
Persons
Cesare Pavese was born in 1908 in Santo Stefano Belbo, a village in the hills of Piedmont. He worked as a translator (of Melville, Joyce and Faulkner) and as an editor for the publishing house Einaudi Editore, while also publishing his own poetry and a string of successful novels, including The House on the Hill and The Moon and the Bonfires. Never actively anti-Fascist himself, he was nevertheless sent into internal exile in Calabria in 1935 for having aided other subversives. He killed himself in 1950, shortly after receiving Italy's most prestigious literary prize, the Strega.