"The first time I read Aracoeli, I found it almost pointlessly disturbing and shocking. On rereading it, I still found it disturbing and shocking, but I have also grown to admire it--perhaps because it is so dark and resists any attempt to classify it. In writing this novel, Morante may have knowingly sacrificed clarity and logic in order to express her vision of a chaotic world." (Lily Tuck, Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante ) Aracoeli --Elsa Morante's final novel--is the story of an aging man's attempt to recover ...
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"The first time I read Aracoeli, I found it almost pointlessly disturbing and shocking. On rereading it, I still found it disturbing and shocking, but I have also grown to admire it--perhaps because it is so dark and resists any attempt to classify it. In writing this novel, Morante may have knowingly sacrificed clarity and logic in order to express her vision of a chaotic world." (Lily Tuck, Woman of Rome: A Life of Elsa Morante ) Aracoeli --Elsa Morante's final novel--is the story of an aging man's attempt to recover the past and get his life on track in the process. The Aracoeli of the title is the narrator's deceased mother, who grew up in a small Spanish town before marrying an upper-class Italian navy ensign. The idyllic years she spends with her only son--Manuel, the narrator of the novel--are shattered when she contracts an incurable disease (probably syphilis) and becomes a nymphomaniac. Now, at the age of 43, Manuel, an unattractive, self-loathing, recovering drug addict who works a dead-end job at a small publishing house, decides to travel to her hometown in Spain in order to look for her. Filled with dreams and remembrances the novel creates a Sebaldian landscape of memory out of this painful journey, painting a portrait that is both touching and bleak. Appearing here for the first time in paperback--the hardcover was published in 1984-- Aracoeli is an important, and long-neglected, work in Morante's oeuvre.
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Seller's Description:
Good. Good condition. French edition. A copy that has been read but remains intact. May contain markings such as bookplates, stamps, limited notes and highlighting, or a few light stains.
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New York. 1985. January 1985. Random House. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. Remainder Mark On Bottom Edge. 0394535189. Translated from the Italian by William Weaver. 311 pages. hardcover. Jacket painting: ‘Elvira' by Amedeo Modigliani, 1918. Jacket design: Susan Shapiro. keywords: Literature Translated Italy Women. FROM THE PUBLISHER-Long recognized as one of modern Italy's major writers, Elsa Morante won renewed acclaim in 1977 with the publication of her sweeping book about World War II, HISTORY: A NOVEL. Now, in her most important work to date, a novel of even greater emotional intensity and lyric power, she delves into the consciousness of one solitary, troubled individual to create an indelible image of contemporary man that stands among the great fictional achievements of our day. Her protagonist is Emanuele, a lonely man who makes his meager living in a Milan publishing house, and who spends his unoccupied hours in the pursuit of young men who cannot return his adoration. As Emanuele narrates with great feeling and insight the story of his impossible-seeming search for his mother's birthplace in the parched landscape of southern Spain, he gradually uncovers a fascinating and bizarre truth about his childhood in Fascist Italy. His mother's name, Aracoeli (‘Altar of Heaven' in Latin), is typical of the fervent piety of rural Andalusia where she was born. A woman of great beauty and great religious conviction, she is utterly devoted to Emanuele's father an officer in the Italian Royal Navy, who, like her, has the greatest respect for order, authority and duty. Emanuele grows up in a large, shadowy apartment in the Heights, an affluent Fascist neighborhood in Rome. He is passionately attached to his mother, who, like him, is a stranger, an outsider, in her husband's family. Their great hero in common is his namesake, Aracoeli's adored brother Manuel, who dies in the Spanish Civil War. But Emanuele's intimate bond with Aracoeli is strained by her second pregnancy and by the birth of a baby girl. When the child dies, Aracoeli has a severe breakdown and her behavior undergoes a radical transformation. Her reserve and dignity give way to insatiable, indiscriminate desire; soon she leaves her family behind, and Emanuele's fragile world is shattered forever. Vivid, relentless, beautiful and sometimes terrifying, ARACOELI, which has been translated with consummate artistry by William Weaver, is a work of enormous power. In scene after stunning scene, Elsa Morante evokes the tensions of daily life in Italy under Fascism, through the distorting crystal of Emanuele's memory. This is a cry from the heart-piercing, corrosive and unforgettable: a brilliant summing-up by one of the world's great living writers. inventory #353.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good in Very Good jacket. 8vo. 1st American edition; dj w/unclipped price, in mylar; grey c w/blue boards; lite foing spots, 311 clean, unmarked pages.
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