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.

    Ferrante's inimitable style lends itself perfectly to a meticulous portrait of these two women that is also the story of a nation and a touching meditation on the nature of friendship. Through the lives of these two women, Ferrante tells the story of a neighbourhood, a city and a country as it is transformed in ways that, in turn, also transform the relationship between her two protagonists.

    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.

    Fascinated with their wealthy acquaintance, Poli, they soon find themselves embedded in his world—his cocaine addiction, his blasphemy, and his corrupt circle of friends.

    One is a Hungarian bastard peasant boy touched by brilliance, the other the sole heir to an Austrian aristocratic family desperately clinging to the prerogatives of noble birth. The key to their bond lies hidden in the secret of a beautiful, strangely carved violin. As their lives unfold through the most violent decades of our century, the two become companions, rivals, and, inevitably, lethal enemies.

    that perverse Book -- Eleanora DusaFirst published in Italian in 1900, The Flame is one of the most sensational works of the fin-de-siecle and is justifiably notorious due to its being a thinly-veiled account of the author's tempestuous affair with the legendary actress, Eleanora Dusa. A contemporary critic called it the most swinish novel ever written. Sarah Bernhardt returned her presentation copy to the author unopened.Writing in a florid style reminiscent of Henry James and Walter Pater, D'Annunzio uses turn of the century Venice as a backdrop in this study of the passionate struggle of two gifted artists for supremacy in love and art, and of the difference between male and female fantasy. After almost a century of neglect, D'Annunzio's insight into the nature of passion and the power of language remains disturbingly intact.

    This novel is part epistolary: his mother writes letters to him, nagging him; his sister Angelica writes, missing him; so does Mara, his former lover, telling him about the birth of her son who may be his own. Left to clean up Michele’s mess, his family and friends complain, commiserate, tease, and grieve, struggling valiantly with the small and large calamities of their interconnected lives.Natalia Ginzburg’s most beloved book in Italy and one of her finest achievements, Happiness, as Such is an original, wise, raw, comic novel that cuts to the bone.

    Advertising in New York Review of Books and Village Voice Literary Supplement.

    Charles Wright’s translation, Jonathan Galassi’s introduction, and, as afterword, Montale’s thoughtful essay on Campana, identify the heart of this poet’s achievement.

    is on the verge of just about everything and consumed by a restless, unanswered longing that rebels against jumping through the hoops of school. Staring down the tunnel to a mundane adulthood, he is appalled by the banality and overwhelming predictability of it all: teachers, parents, and above all his classmates - the seething masses of dutiful zombies and sistren of the Evervirgin Sorority. A bicycle bandit with a DeNiro smile, Alex sports a homemade buzzcut, ditches school to drink and trade stories with his posse of delinquents and rogues, and chases away the blues by assailing his eardrums with the Clash. He shares a brief friendship with the privileged, semi-degenerate Martino, who seems to have mastered the devil-may-care stance Alex covets - until he's busted for drugs. And then comes the sudden entrance of Aidi, who seems to instantly understand, complement, and challenge him. A hundred letters and conversations later, she is magnificent, amazing, irreplaceable ... and leaving for a year in America at the end of the summer.

    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.

    "A perfect work like no other. (Calasso) has re-created . . . the morning of our world."--Gore Vidal. 15 engravings.

    The only unabridged prose translation of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso - a witty parody of the chivalric legends of Charlemagne and the Saracen invasion of France - this version faithfully recaptures the entire narrative and the subtle meanings behind it.

    A face-off between a man and a boy. The same blood runs through their veins. One, Daniele Mallarico, is a successful illustrator at the peak of his career. The other, Mario, is his four-year-old grandson who has barely learned to talk but has a few tricks up his loose-fitting sleeves all the same. The older combatant has lived for years in almost complete solitude. The younger one has been dumped with a grandfather he barely knows for 72 hours. Starnone’s sharp novella unfolds within the four walls (and a balcony!) of the apartment where the grandfather grew up, now the home of his daughter and her family, where the rage of an aging man meets optimism incarnate in the shape of a four-year-old child. Lurking, ever present in the conflict, is the memory of Naples, a wily, violent, and passionate city where the old man spent his youth and whose influence is not easily shaken.

    In each town he raises the ghosts that inhabit the houses and monuments: Kafka and Freud; Wittgenstein and Marcus Aurelius; Lukcs, Heidegger, and Cline; Canetti and Ovid. He also encounters a host of more obscure but no less intriguing personalities--philosophers, novelists, diplomats, and patriots--on an odyssey that brings middle-European culture to life in its most picturesque and evocative forms.Danube is among the first of a new list of nonfiction paperbacks published as Harvill Press Editions.