Arturo's Island

By Elsa Morante

Book Overview

Elsa Morante's novels were once considered the greatest of Italy's postwar generation. Here, Ann Goldstein's "deft translation" (Madeline Schwartz, New York Review of Books) of Arturo's Island heralds a "second life" for the beloved author, finally garnering Morante "the new readers she deserves" (Lily Tuck, Wall Street Journal). Imbued with a spectral grace, the novel follows the adolescent Arturo through his days on the isolated Neapolitan island of Procida, where--his mother long deceased, his father often absent, and a dog as his sole companion--he roams the countryside or reads in his family's lonely, dilapidated mansion. This quiet, meandering boyhood existence is existentially upended when his father brings home a beautiful sixteen- year- old bride, Nunziatella. A novel of thwarted desires, written with "the power of malediction" (Dwight Garner, New York Times), Arturo's Island reemerges to take its rightful place in the world literary canon.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 163149662X
• ISBN13: 9781631496622
• Release Date: February 2020
• Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
• Length: 386 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

A Masterpiece by one of Italy's finest writers

L'isola di Arturo, Arturo's Island, is Elsa Morante's second novel. Published in Italy in 1957, it was very successful at the time, and has since become a classic, taught in schools and widely read. Arturo's initiation to the tragedies and mediocrities of adulthood is contained within the geographical space of a beautiful Southern island, Procida, where he is born and raised. His wayward (in more than one meaning) father appears and disappears from the son's world. Each time he returns to Procida, he brings back from the continent fables, news of the 'real world', and, in one instance, a new wife (Arturo's mother died giving birth to him). "Arturo's island" is a cruel, yet spell-binding, fable on the enchantment of childhood and on the moment in which our life tips into adulthood. By the time you get to the end of the book, you'll wish you could go back to the beginning and start Arturo's - and your own- life all over again. A masterpiece.