Published here for the first time in the English language, it is presented with Foscolo's highly acclaimed poem, Of Tombs. Banished from his homeland and from the woman he loves, Jacopo Ortis lives with the insufferable feelings of disillusionment and betrayal. Gone are his youthful dreams of literary glory, and in their place only his embittered laughter at fortune, at men, and at God. In the anguish of his state he feels himself compelled to make one final, titanic, and tragic gesture to the rulers of his age.

    So when Rino and his cronies come up with a plan to reverse their fortunes, Cristiano wonders if maybe their lives are poised for deliverance after all. But the plan goes horribly awry; on a night of apocalyptic weather, each person will act in a way that has irreversible consequences for themselves and others, and Cristiano will find his life changed forever, and not in the way he hoped." As God Commands is a story of life at the crossroads of hope and despair.

    As Timoteo’s tale begins, he’s driving to the beach house where his beautiful, accomplished wife, Elsa, is waiting. Car trouble forces him to make a detour into a dingy suburb, where he meets Italia–unattractive, unpolished, working-class–who awakens a part of him he scarcely recognizes. Disenchanted with his stable life, he seizes the chance to act without consequences, and their savage first encounter spirals into an inexplicable obsession. Returning again and again to Italia’s dim hovel, he finds himself faced with a choice: a life of passion with Italia, or a life of comfort and predictability with Elsa. As Angela's life hangs in the balance, Timoteo's own life flashes before his eyes, this time seen through the lens of the one time he truly lived.

    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."

    Her life has been characterized by honor and fierce passion, and above all by an abiding search for perfect love that has spanned much of the twentieth century. Ever in the background of this remarkable woman's story is the stunning Sardinian landscape, the deep blues of the Mediterranean, the rugged mountains of the Sardinian back-country dotted with charming villages lost in time.With warmth, great humor, and deep insight Milena Agus writes about the customs and the beauty of her native Sardinia, about love, family, immigration, war, and peace. From the Land of the Moon is the moving English debut of one of Italy s most important new literary talents.

    It tells of young Giovanni Drogo, who is posted to a distant fort overlooking the vast Tartar steppe. Although not intending to stay, Giovanni suddenly finds that years have passed, as, almost without his noticing, he has come to share the others' wait for a foreign invasion that never happens. Over time the fort is downgraded and Giovanni's ambitions fade until the day the enemy begins massing on the desolate steppe...

    While there, Levi reflected on the harsh landscape and its inhabitants, peasants who lived the same lives their ancestors had, constantly fearing black magic and the near presence of death. In so doing, Levi offered a starkly beautiful and moving account of a place and a people living outside the boundaries of progress and time.

    To avenge what you have done you will die. But what has Manno the pharmacist done? Nothing that he can think of. The next day he and his hunting companion are both dead. The police investigation is inconclusive. However, a modest high school teacher with a literary bent has noticed a clue that, he believes, will allow him to trace the killer. Patiently, methodically, he begins to untangle a web of erotic intrigue and political calculation. But the results of his amateur sleuthing are unexpected—and tragic. To Each His Own is one of the masterworks of the great Sicilian novelist Leonardo Sciascia—a gripping and unconventional detective story that is also an anatomy of a society founded on secrets, lies, collusion, and violence.

    Driven by an insatiable desire to rise above his station and fueled by a nobility that scorns him, Vincenzo sacrifices family and love to transform his tiny spice shop into a trading empire. The name, Florio, soon instills fear and respect. The men of the family are stubborn, arrogant, philanderers and slaves to passions. Paolo shrewdly fights his way out of an earthquake-striken Bagnara to start anew in Sicily. Ignazio II rejects his one true love to fulfill his destiny as the head of a trading empire. Not to be outdone by the men, the Florio women unapologetically demand their place outside the restraints of caring mothers, alluring mistresses, or wounded wives. Giula, though only a mistress, is fiercely intelligent and wins over politicians and businessmen alike. Angelina, born a bastard, charts her own future against the wishes of her father.In this epic yet intimate tale of power, passion, and revenge, the rise and fall of a family taps into the universal desire to become more than who we are born as.

    Alice and Mattia, both "primes," are misfits who seem destined to be alone. Haunted by childhood tragedies that mark their lives, they cannot reach out to anyone else. When Alice and Mattia meet as teenagers, they recognize in each other a kindred, damaged spirit. But the mathematically gifted Mattia accepts a research position that takes him thousands of miles away, and the two are forced to separate. Then a chance occurrence reunites them and forces a lifetime of concealed emotion to the surface. Like Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, this is a stunning meditation on loneliness, love, and the weight of childhood experience that is set to become a universal classic.

    Across the chessboard of Europe, from the German plains to the flourishing Dutch cities and down to Venice, the gateway to the East, our hero, a 'Survivor', a radical Protestant Anabaptist who goes under many names, and his enemy, a loyal papal spy and heretic hunter known mysteriously as "Q" play a game in which no moves are forbidden and the true size of the stakes remain hidden until the end. What begins as a personal struggle to reveal each other's identity becomes a mission that can only end in death.

    In this period the Italian Communist Party is very strong, but the Second World War and fascism are still vividly remembered. Boscaccio has a communist mayor named Peppone. He wants to realise the communist ideals, and the Roman Catholic priest Don Camillo is desperately trying to prevent this. But despite their different views these men can count on each other in the fight against social injustice and abuses.

    Not thrift but generosity and an indifference to money; not caution but courage and a contempt for danger; not shrewdness but frankness and a love of truth; not tact but a love of ones neighbor and self-denial; not a desire for success but a desire to be and to know." Whether she writes of the loss of a friend, Cesare Pavese; or what is inexpugnable of World War II; or the Abruzzi, where she and her first husband lived in forced residence under Fascist rule; or the importance of silence in our society; or her vocation as a writer; or even a pair of worn-out shoes, Ginzburg brings to her reflections the wisdom and grace of a survivor and the spare, wry, and poetically resonant style her readers have come to recognize.

    This is his twelfth bestselling book of fiction. Fifteen-year-old Margherita lives with her eccentric family on the outskirts of town, a semi-urban wilderness peopled by gypsies, illegal immigrants, and no end of bizarre characters: a reassuring and fertile playground for an imaginative little girl like Margherita. But one day, a gigantic, black cube shows up next door. Her new neighbors have arrived, and they’re destined to ruin everything.

    In an effort to retrieve his past, he withdraws to the family home somewhere in the hills between Milan and Turin. There, in the sprawling attic, he searches through boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums, and adolescent diaries. And so Yambo relives the story of his generation: Mussolini, Catholic education and guilt, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Fred Astaire. His memories run wild, and the life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel. Yambo struggles through the frames to capture one simple, innocent image: that of his first love. A fascinating, abundant novel-wide-ranging, nostalgic, funny, full of heart-from the incomparable Eco.