Conversations in Sicily
Published on 8. February 2001
Book
Paperback/Softback
202 pages
978-0-8112-1455-1 (ISBN)
Description
It stands as a modern classic not only for its powerful thematic resonance as one of the great novels of Italian anti-fascism but also as a trailblazer for its style, which blends literary modernism with the pre-modern fable in a prose of lyric beauty. Comparing Vittorini's work to Picasso's, Italo Calvino described Conversations as "the book-Guernica."
The novel begins at a time in the narrator's life when nothing seems to matter; whether he is reading newspaper posters blaring of wartime massacres, lying in bed with his wife or girlfriend, or flipping through the pages of a dictionary it is all the same to him-until he embarks on a journey back to Sicily, the home he has not seen in some fifteen years. In traveling through the Sicilian countryside and in variously hilarious and tragic conversations with its people-his indomitable mother in particular-he reconnects with his roots and rediscovers some basic human values.
In the introduction Hemingway wrote for the American debut of Conversations (published as In Sicily by New Directions in 1949) he remarked: "I care very much about Vittorini's ability to bring rain with him when he comes, if the earth is dry and that is what you need." More recently, American critic Donald Heiney wrote that in this one book, Vittorini "like Rabelais and Cervantes...adds a new artistic dimension to the history of literature."
The novel begins at a time in the narrator's life when nothing seems to matter; whether he is reading newspaper posters blaring of wartime massacres, lying in bed with his wife or girlfriend, or flipping through the pages of a dictionary it is all the same to him-until he embarks on a journey back to Sicily, the home he has not seen in some fifteen years. In traveling through the Sicilian countryside and in variously hilarious and tragic conversations with its people-his indomitable mother in particular-he reconnects with his roots and rediscovers some basic human values.
In the introduction Hemingway wrote for the American debut of Conversations (published as In Sicily by New Directions in 1949) he remarked: "I care very much about Vittorini's ability to bring rain with him when he comes, if the earth is dry and that is what you need." More recently, American critic Donald Heiney wrote that in this one book, Vittorini "like Rabelais and Cervantes...adds a new artistic dimension to the history of literature."
Reviews / Votes
"Here the feeling of the country and the character of the mother are quite marvelous." -- Publishers Weekly "This reprint retains the introduction by Hemingway that appeared in the 1949 U.S. edition. That's worth the price alone." -- Library JournalMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 201 mm
Width: 134 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
210 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8112-1455-1 (9780811214551)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
ERNEST HEMINGWAY was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. He worked as a reporter for the Kansas City Star for six months before volunteering in 1918 for the American Red Cross ambulance service in Italy during World War I. Wounded by an Austrian trench mortar, he spent months in the hospital in Milan recovering from his injuries. After a brief return to the United States, he moved to Paris in December 1921 and quickly made a name for himself in expatriate literary circles there. His first major novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926), established him as a mainstream writer and was followed by the bestselling A Farewell to Arms (1929). Married four times and the father of three children, he was a celebrity known for his masculine ethos and interest in blood sports such as hunting, boxing, and bullfighting. He made frequent deep sea fishing excursions aboard his cabin cruiser Pilar from his home in Key West, Florida, where he had settled in 1928. He later made his home in Cuba in the village of San Francisco de Paula, outside Havana. He worked as a war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War and World War II, and his novel For Whom The Bell Tolls (1940) solidified his reputation as one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. His novella The Old Man and the Sea (1952) won the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1954 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Unable to remain in post-revolutionary Cuba, Hemingway spent his final years in Ketchum, Idaho. Following unsuccessful treatment at the Mayo Clinic for physical and mental health problems, he died from suicide at his home in Ketchum in 1961.