As a young man in the Seventies, Valentino leaves home in search of a better life. With age, he begins to feel an intense regret, a longing for the world and the people he left behind, which he might not be able to recover, even after returning.
Set in Magna Graecia, the sun-drenched land where ancient Greeks stopped in their travels and happily settled, now full of ruins, South takes us back to a time when notaries and lawyers were undiscussed authorities in small towns. Meet the Notaio, his lover Magda, a Polish countess and a spy, and delve into their love story in Naples; meet the Farmacista, owner of the first chemist's shop in town, his wife Lea, and their children; follow the paths where these lives cross, and Tamara, Mara for short, marries into the Notaio's family; get to know charming Uncle Giorgio, an extravagant loner, owner of two small Gauguins, and Gioacchino, the house ghost.
Servants, drivers, peasants fully devoted and bound to their masters enliven this tale of love and loss, war and peace, politics and power, told in an elegant, affecting prose that transports us through time and space.
A New York Times Best Historical Fiction Book of 2023
Through the loves and losses of a middle-class family from Calabria, this heady, atmospheric saga retraces the history of twentieth-century Italy.
As a young man in the Seventies, Valentino leaves home in search of a better life. With age, he begins to feel an intense regret, a longing for the world and the people he left behind, which he might not be able to recover, even after returning.
Set in Magna Graecia, the sun-drenched land where ancient Greeks stopped in their travels and happily settled, now full of ruins, South takes us back to a time when notaries and lawyers were undiscussed authorities in small towns. Meet the Notaio, his lover Magda, a Polish countess and a spy, and delve into their love story in Naples; meet the Farmacista, owner of the first chemist's shop in town, his wife Lea, and their children; follow the paths where these lives cross, and Tamara, Mara for short, marries into the Notaio's family; get to know charming Uncle Giorgio, an extravagant loner, owner of two small Gauguins, and Gioacchino, the house ghost.
Servants, drivers, peasants fully devoted and bound to their masters enliven this tale of love and loss, war and peace, politics and power, told in an elegant, affecting prose that transports us through time and space.
As a young man in the Seventies, Valentino leaves home in search of a better life. With age, he begins to feel an intense regret, a longing for the world and the people he left behind, which he might not be able to recover, even after returning.
Set in Magna Graecia, the sun-drenched land where ancient Greeks stopped in their travels and happily settled, now full of ruins, South takes us back to a time when notaries and lawyers were undiscussed authorities in small towns. Meet the Notaio, his lover Magda, a Polish countess and a spy, and delve into their love story in Naples; meet the Farmacista, owner of the first chemist's shop in town, his wife Lea, and their children; follow the paths where these lives cross, and Tamara, Mara for short, marries into the Notaio's family; get to know charming Uncle Giorgio, an extravagant loner, owner of two small Gauguins, and Gioacchino, the house ghost.
Servants, drivers, peasants fully devoted and bound to their masters enliven this tale of love and loss, war and peace, politics and power, told in an elegant, affecting prose that transports us through time and space.
A New York Times Best Historical Fiction Book of 2023
Through the loves and losses of a middle-class family from Calabria, this heady, atmospheric saga retraces the history of twentieth-century Italy.
As a young man in the Seventies, Valentino leaves home in search of a better life. With age, he begins to feel an intense regret, a longing for the world and the people he left behind, which he might not be able to recover, even after returning.
Set in Magna Graecia, the sun-drenched land where ancient Greeks stopped in their travels and happily settled, now full of ruins, South takes us back to a time when notaries and lawyers were undiscussed authorities in small towns. Meet the Notaio, his lover Magda, a Polish countess and a spy, and delve into their love story in Naples; meet the Farmacista, owner of the first chemist's shop in town, his wife Lea, and their children; follow the paths where these lives cross, and Tamara, Mara for short, marries into the Notaio's family; get to know charming Uncle Giorgio, an extravagant loner, owner of two small Gauguins, and Gioacchino, the house ghost.
Servants, drivers, peasants fully devoted and bound to their masters enliven this tale of love and loss, war and peace, politics and power, told in an elegant, affecting prose that transports us through time and space.
Mario Fortunato was born in Cir , Calabria, Italy. For three
decades he worked as a literary critic for the Italian current
affairs magazine L'Espresso and continues to work as a columnist
for the German daily paper S ddeutsche Zeitung. He has been a
member of the Italian Cinema Commission of the Ministry of Culture
and the International Advisory Board of the Christopher Isherwood
Foundation, is a founder of the Napoli Teatro Festival Italia, and
Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in London. He is also a
former director of the Antonio Ratti Art Foundation and former
columnist for The Guardian and Le Monde. In addition to writing
novels, he has translated into Italian works by Evelyn Waugh,
Virginia Woolf, and Henry James. South is his first novel to appear
in English.
Julia MacGibbon has translated works of fiction, nonfiction, and
poetry, including Marta Barone's Sunken City. She lives near Rome.
“[An] archly observed novel…playful, kaleidoscopic…wonderfully
eccentric minor characters—chauffeurs, nursemaids, household
servants—vie for center stage with the equally eccentric bourgeois
clans that employ them…it’s ‘like a page out of Proust but without
any aristocrats.’” —New York Times Book Review
“[An] exuberant, dizzying family saga…[a] wild ride through
twentieth-century Italy, both political and personal.”
—Booklist
“A sweeping story of family, community, and country, South is a
saga in the truest sense of the word. In lush, enthralling, often
funny prose, Fortunato beautifully captures both the great dramas
and small poignancies that make up a life.” —Francesca Giacco,
author of Six Days in Rome
“Gorgeous, sensual, seductive, and magnetic…a journey through time,
history, space, passions.” —Giornale di Brescia
“[Fortunato’s] most beautiful book…a family saga with all the
nuances of love and pain.” —Convenzionali
Praise for Mario Fortunato:
“As I read Fortunato’s writing, I have the impression of being
faced with that kind of writer, rare in Italian literature, who,
despite starting from a poetic state of mind, nevertheless manages
to be a storyteller.” —Alberto Moravia
“Mario Fortunato is a natural storyteller.” —Doris Lessing
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