This novel concerns a widowed Italian schoolteacher, Ida Mancuso, with a feckless teenaged son. After being raped by a German, she finds that the son she bears provides her only source of meaning amid
In this little-known classic of Italian literature, young Arturo grows up in near-isolation on the island of Procida in the Bay of Naples. His mother died in childbirth and his wayward father, who lef
Once considered the greatest writer of Italy’s postwar generation—and admired by authors as varied as John Banville and Rivka Galchen—Elsa Morante is experiencing a literary renaissance, marked not le
“Astonishing for the quality of the writing . . . the complexity of the invented world, the wide- ranging view of the human condition.”— Elena FerranteElsa Morante’s novels were once considered the gr
First published in Italian in 1968, The World Saved by Kids was written in the aftermath of deep personal change and in the context of what Elsa Morante called the “great youth movement exploding agai
At the age of 43, Manuel, an unattractive, self-loathing, recovering drug addict who works a dead-end job at a small publishing house, travels to his mother's hometown in Spain to understand why she s
