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Giorgio Bassani's masterwork has Vittorio de Sica's 1971 film adaptation to thank for its dual success and obscurity. Not enough people know that this tale of a middle-class Jewish youth's obsession with the far more aristocratic Micol Finzi-Contini stems from a novel, not a novelization. Bassani's doom- and tomb-ridden examination of one-sided love is far more complex--about individuals' inability to contend with personal and political annihilation. Events call for heroism, yet it seems "downright absurd that now, all of a sudden, exceptional behavior was demanded of us." The narrator writes in retrospect, 13 years after World War II's end, and reveals the Finzi-Continis' 1943 deportation to Germany right from the start: "Who could say if they found any sort of burial at all?"
As Fascist racial laws go from strength to strength, the family, which had long isolated itself from the other inhabitants of Ferrara, opens its walled grounds and tennis court to other young Jews and even returns to the local temple. Unfortunately, the situation encourages the narrator's dream that Micol will return his love, and she is forced into cruel honesty. "She looked into my eyes, and her gaze entered me, straight, sure, hard: with the limpid inexorability of a sword."
The author has re-created a tragic era in which even nobility could not outrun events, let alone admit they needed to. (For a nonfiction account of the fates of five Italian Jewish families under fascism, see Alexander Stille's Benevolence and Betrayal.) Bassani's elision of historical and personal agony is furthermore superbly translated by William Weaver. All is foretold in the novel's Manzonian epigraph, "The heart, to be sure, always has something to say about what is to come, to him who heeds it. But what does the heart know? Only a little of what has already happened."
Book Description
(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
Giorgio Bassani’s acclaimed novel of unrequited love and the plight of the Italian Jews on the brink of World War II has become a classic of modern Italian literature.
Made into an Academy Award—winning film in 1970, The Garden of the Finzi—Continis is a richly evocative and nostalgic depiction of prewar Italy. The narrator, a young middle-class Jew in the Italian city of Ferrara, has long been fascinated from afar by the Finzi-Continis, a wealthy and aristocratic Jewish family, and especially by their daughter Micol. But it is not until 1938 that he is invited behind the walls of their lavish estate, as local Jews begin to gather there to avoid the racial laws of the Fascists, and the garden of the Finzi-Continis becomes an idyllic sanctuary in an increasingly brutal world. Years after the war, the narrator returns in memory to his doomed relationship with the lovely Micol, and to the predicament that faced all the Ferrarese Jews, in this unforgettably wrenching portrait of a community about to be destroyed by the world outside the garden walls.
Customer Reviews:
The Garden is lush.......2007-03-18
Bassani's Garden is a book worth reading. I enjoyed it because it seemed to capture a world about which I knew little before: aristocratic and middle class Italian Jewish society before the second world war. It is a melancholy world to be sure, but not unpleasant. Tim Parks' introduction to the always well-produced Everyman edition was well done, and shed light on aspects of the novel of which I was not aware. Readers of Lampedusa's The Leopard will likely enjoy The Garden, as both take a literarily mature and nostalgic look at a society which no longer exists. For myself, I enjoyed The Leopard better, but this is to take nothing away from The Garden, which is fine in its own right.
The Italian Jewish Novel.......2004-11-23
If you are looking for a narrative investigation into the Jewish identity in Italy, you will love "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" and its insight on the awkward years after the approval of the racial laws in Italy. Similarly, the protagonist's vain and self-defeating struggle for love in times of impinging war deploys a tension worth of such classics as Stendhal, Henry James, or the Brontes. (A painstaking quote of a poem by Emily Dickinson signs a major turn of the plot, and could possibly disclose the whole meaning of the novel.) I wish other books by Bassani were currently available in English.
A beautiful Garden.......2004-02-21
We know so much about German Jews and the problems they faced with the Nazism, and so little on the Italian Jews in the same time, that Giorgio Bassani's `The Garden of Finzi-Continis' stands as a remarkable thing. This is not the only reason to read and praise this novel. This book is filled with wonderful characters that make it a great work of fiction.
Set in an Italian small town called Ferrara, `Garden...' follows a couple of years in the life of the narrator. Years after the events, he is forced to remember the whole story, and that's the beginning of the narrative's journey. We follow him from a small and naïve boy worried with school grades until when he is a grown-up in love with the Finzi-Contini girl and has his political sense developed.
Bassani has a wonderful prose. Many pages of the book are devoted to beautifully evocative descriptions of things like the house, the city, the garden. That is one of the things that make this book so magical.
Another one is its vivid characters. Everyone seems to be real people and not literary creations, and this is a great achievement for a writer. The narrator is the person who goes through the most drastic transformation. Throughout his story he learns the importance of his past and roots, and how they are place in contemporary history.
`The Garden of the Finzi-Contini' is one of those books that don't take too long to read, but take a very long period to be forgotten. And to some people it will never be forgotten.
haunting love story.......2003-08-30
This is a love story, a story about growing up, a story about discovering one's three rich heritages (Italian and Jewish and literary). And it is a story about a boy becoming a writer.
There must be thousands such coming-of-age stories; thousands of stories about that first (and naturally unrequited) love; and, since most of the people who write these stories are authors there are even a few tales of how boys grow up to become writers.
And yet this tale is haunting. It grips the reader and never lets him go till the end and even long after. And that is because this is also a story about a murder.
The murder is barely mentioned. Oh, the narrator invokes it once or twice when for example he tells us that when he looked out at his family members during a Passover meal "most of whom, a few years later would be swallowed up by German crematory ovens" he found almost all of them terribly bland and bourgeois. He also mentions it at the beginning when he informs us that his first (unrequited) love, Micol, her father, her mother, and her Grandmother were all "deported to Germany in the autumn of `43". But that's not what this story is about.
This is not a story about concentration camps and the mechanized degradation there. This is a hauntingly, heart-breakingly beautiful story about a young man and a first love in a wondrous garden. A story that comes to an abrupt end because the children (the real flowers in the Garden of the Finzi-Continis) are made to pay the ultimate price because the Italians around them first resented that "the Jews were not enough like the others and then, having ascertained their almost total assimilation into their surroundings, [resented] the opposite: that they were just like the others."
It is, in the end (to paraphrase Amos Oz), about Jews who were not to be special and who were not to be banal; who were not to be.
Fine Novel.......2003-04-27
Some readers will be familiar with this story because this novel was the basis for the beautiful and haunting film of the same title. Comparisons between the film and the book are inevitable. The basic story is identical in both. The narrator is a young, middle class Italian Jew in the provincial city of Ferrara. The events take place on the eve of WWII and are set against the background of the anti-semitic legislation and policies of the Italian fascist state. The book recounts the hopeless infatuation of the narrator with the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family. This doomed and largely one-sided passion is presented subtly as an allegory of the fate of the Italian Jewish community. Not surprisingly, the book is considerably more detailed than the movie, more detached, and at times almost ironic in tone. The quality of writing is excellent, even in translation, and the characterization of pre-war Ferrara is evocative. The gradual constriction of the life of Italian Jews emerges slowly and indirectly, but with great power. The book also features an important subplot concerning the narrator's relationship with his father which is also presented with delicacy and real pathos. This is one of those books whose impact tends to linger well after you finish reading it.
Average customer rating:
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The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
Giorgio Bassani
Manufacturer: Buccaneer Books
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1568492553 |
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Garden of the Finzi-Continis, The
Giorgio Bassani
Manufacturer: Everyman's Library
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1857152883 |
Book Description
Celebrity werewolf and late-night radio host Kitty Norville prefers to be heard and not seen.So when she?s invited to testify at a Senate hearing on behalf of supernaturals, and her face gets plastered on national TV, she inherits a new set of friends, and enemies, including the vampire mistress of the city; an ++ber-hot Brazilian were-jaguar; and a Bible-thumping senator who wants to expose kitty as a monster.Kitty quickly learns that in this city of dirty politicians and backstabbing pundits, everyone?s itching for a fight.
Customer Reviews:
Fun urban fantasy--Makes for a great summer read.......2007-07-30
The Kitty books are very much light reading--fun and entertaining fiction. Kitty doesn't differ all that much from any of the other female protagonists in the urban fantasy subgenre (from Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan, to the early Anita Blake), though Kitty's radio show does make a unique and interesting premise for the books. The book does have its flaws; the secondary characters are either good people or complete sleaze, and when Vaughn occasionally starts writing about politics I want to wince (the last two points may have something to do with each other), but the stories themselves are still short, fun, and very very readable. I'll definately be buying the next book to read over the summer!
If you liked the first book in the series, then you won't be disappointed by the second! And if you are new to the Kitty Norville books: while you don't need to have read the previous volume to understand what happening in this one, why deny yourself the opportunity of experiencing Kitty's escapades from the very beginning?
Kitty's split personality.......2007-07-24
I find it annoying that she writes about her wolf form in third person when the book is narrated by the character, Kitty. I find it so annoying--I decided not to buy any future books of this series. For a really good werewolf novel read "The Passion" and "The Promise" by Donna Boyd as well as "Bitten" by Kelly Armstrong.
Better than the first.......2007-05-07
I bought this and Kitty and the Midnight Hour together - If I hadn't I probably would not have picked this one up. I wasn't thrilled with the first novel, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one. The storyline was better, and the charactors more more fleshed out and real this time around. I just finished the 3rd novel and they are definitely getting better each time.
Polyanna meets Dracula.......2007-04-30
This is a vampire/werewolf book appropriate for your 12-14 year old. Shallow characters, grandmotherly vampires (not scary at all), and sinister government officials.
Strangely, the book's back cover has paragraphs (probably taken wildly out of context from adult writers - -C. Harris and L. Banks. These are misleading - -this book belongs in the "preteen" section.
Being an adult, I would not buy another book in this series.
Great follow up to "Kitty And The Midnight Hour".......2007-03-27
This book is the follow up to the wonderful "Kitty And The Midnight Hour" featuring a young werewolf who has a midnight talk radio show. In the first book Kitty found herself growing up and eventually had to leave her pack and go on the road when she felt they let her down.
"Kitty Goes To Washington" starts a month after those events when Kitty is called to testify to a senate hearing on werewolves and vampires. She arrives in Washington and spends some time as a tourist, and alongside the usual American monuments and museums she visits a Werewolf bar (where she meets the rather lovely were-jaguar Luis) and the vampire Mistress of the City, Alette, with her sidekick Leo.
However, whilst waiting to be called to testify, Kitty finds herself investigating the Rev Elijah Wood's church, breaking into a US facility with Cormac and interviewing a former Nazi werewolf. And time time for her testimony is becoming dangerously close to the full moon.
As in the former book, this is a really good fun read with some fast pacing, some interesting vignettes into werewolf life, a little love interest and a lot of amusing plot. Kitty is a great character with a winsome naivete but with a streak of iron through her too.
As an English reader I noticed a classic American mistake; Alette and Leo apparently have a "British Accent"; of course there is no such thing - there's English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish and others as well but "British" can't refer overall to one accent. Still I got the message - that they probably seem like your traditional film villain because of that accent. It also became very clear that Carrie Vaughn is a bit of a tourist herself with some very gushing descriptions of Kitty's time looking round Washington.
"Kitty Goes To Washington" doesn't have complete backstory so those who haven't read the first book might not get all the nuances, particularly with regard to why Kitty left her pack. There are more supernatural creatures in this book than the previous but it isn't overloaded with them like some urban fantasies these days.
Carrie Vaughn sticks to all the traditional tropes for this genre - vampires being allergic to garlic, werewolves to silver, etc - but she infuses her own interpretation on what it might be like to be one of these creatures. I liked the way that we see into Kitty's head, we follow her trying to rationalise her situation, to see the good in it and to help others see some possible benefits of their status as different from normal humans. I've made it sound a bit philosophical which it isn't, it's just a fun book with a possible deeper message in there for those who want to look.
Product Description
the popular kitty series by carrie vaughn now in one volume!wonderful werewolf omnibus!!!!
Product Description
Kitty Norville Series, Books 1-3: Kitty and the Midnight Hour, Kitty Goes to Washington, and Kitty Takes a Holiday
Average customer rating:
- Good. Complicated. Did I mention good?
- One of the most unusual sci-fi books I've ever read
- This book confirms Moran as an unusual writer... (!)
- the armageddon blues
- Great First Novel set in alternate history with aliens etc.
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Armageddon Blues
Daniel Keys Moran
Manufacturer: Spectra
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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The Ring
ASIN: 0553271156
Release Date: 1988-03-01 |
Customer Reviews:
Good. Complicated. Did I mention good? .......2005-01-11
The first book I ever read over and over again... wasn't Daniel Keys Moran. However, the first Sci-Fi book I read over and over again was a Moran book. Not Armegedon Blues... Emerald Eyes. All of which was years ago. Recently I decided to re-read the old favorites, and hit this one along the way since I'd never been able to find it before. So I got it, and read it, and really, really enjoyed it. It's sort of a kind of prequel to Emerald Eyes, but not really. It might be sort of in the same universe, or not. Anyways, it's very good. I liked the three computers, a lot.
Plot.... well, that's complicated. See, the world ended. And then some aliens stopped by because their spaceship broke down. And then the girl ran away to the past, and the luckiest man alive met her... no, really, it all makes sense when you read it.
One of the most unusual sci-fi books I've ever read.......2002-12-01
Of the books by Daniel Keys Moran that I've read, this is easily my favorite. He builds a complex world, and at times, the way the story is going isn't clear, but I think it's worth the effort. This was, at the time it was published, a critically hailed book by some - I remember reading a review of it in one of the free newsletters offered at Waldenbooks - and I read it as a teenager during the height of the Cold War, so the future it predicted seemed all too easily imagined. It still is a good book, unusual in its premise, and, as I've rarely seen it in a used book store, worth finding and keeping.
This book confirms Moran as an unusual writer... (!).......2001-04-03
Moran became a cult writer with the publication of his first book, the Armageddon Blues. Let me give you some idea of what this book is like. Good? Well, I think that some readers will find enjoyment in reading it. But Moran doesn't seek the middle ground with his readers. I found it disjointed and hard to read as a continuous narrative, with some clever ideas. Unusual features of the Armageddon Blues include: (A)its presentation, in short, punchy vignettes that feel like single scenes rather than full blown chapters. Chapters?! (B) A sense of some grand, plotted machinery occurring someplace offstage in the universe, with aliens and stuff. Drama?! Only the personal stuff, about Jalian D'Arsenette y ken Selvren, his female lead, and a couple of others, guys. She doesn't like them. (C) Time travel into the past through a negative entropy universe-- where time flows backwards, basically. The best thing about this book is the tightly focused scenes, some being pretty exciting. At times I found myself laughing and saying WHAT IS HIS PLAN HERE? The book gives you just a hint of what he has planned for later books in this timeline, which he calls the Great Wheel of Existence. This book is not a part of his Continuing Time series. The Continuing Time is set on the Great Wheel, but it gets better kudos than the Armageddon Blues.
the armageddon blues.......2000-01-04
The Armageddon Blues, I found was incomparable to nearly any other sci-fi title I have ever read. It is replete with concepts and implications of science and reality that astound the imagination and occasionally are quite hilarious. Though the actual form of the book can be a bit rough and difficult to read at times, the content more then makes up for this. The "enemy of entropy" Georges Vezina driving on the road, with the stereo, heater, and air conditioner all simultaneously operating, left me laughing for minutes. An excellent book, by an excellent imaginative mind.
Great First Novel set in alternate history with aliens etc........1997-05-16
Armageddon Blues is DKM's first novel, and although rough in a few spots, is very polished and enjoyable. Mr. Moran mixes aliens, telepathy, anti-entropy, time travel, alternate timelines, and Artificial Intelligences into a busy but always intriguing yarn.
Daniel Moran's work has been described most succinctly as Cool (with a capital C)
Book Description
A fascinating examination of the most famous religious relics of all time
Since the early days of the Church, Christians have venerated religious relics. In this fascinating book, Steven Sora tells the story of Christianity's most treasured artifacts-the Ark of the Covenant, Noah's Ark, the True Cross, the Spear of Destiny, the Shroud of Turin, and the Holy Grail-as well as lesser-known objects such as the Veil of Veronica and the bones and blood of Biblical figures such as St. Luke. After describing when and where these relics first came to light and what miraculous powers people believe they possess, he discusses what modern science can tell us about these much-revered objects-and what science still fails to explain.
Steven Sora (Easton, PA) is the author of The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar: Solving the Oak Island Mystery and the forthcoming Secret Societies of America's Elite: From the Knights Templar to Skull and Bones.
Customer Reviews:
The authenticity of many Holy Land artifacts is thrown into doubt........2006-10-25
Steven Sora does a remarkable job detailing many of the most important antiquities our world has ever known--but what of authenticity? In a clandestine meeting of leading Israeli archaeologists are shown a remarkable artifact. It's a stone tablet, apparently from 1,000BC. The writing on its face describes repairs to the temple of King Solomon. It is the first archaeological evidence ever found of this legendary building. For authentification, the tablet was taken to the Geological Survey of Israel. Here, after a battery of tests, including radiocarbon dating, scientists officially pronounced the stone to be genuine. The tests even revealed microscopic particles of gold in the outer layer of stone. These were apparently the result of the tablet surviving the fire which, according to the bible, destroyed the temple when the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem in 586BC. The stone tablet was offered for sale to the Israel Museum, home to many of Israel's greatest treasures. Rumors suggested the asking price was as high as $10million.
But the museum needed to know where the stone had come from. Even its owner was a mystery. To make matters more complex, the stone itself had disappeared again. The Israeli Antiquities Authority wanted answers. A nine month search for the mysterious stranger who had first appeared with the stone eventually led them to a private detective who had been hired by a well known antiquities collector, Oded Golan. Golan insisted he too was just a front man for another collector. But the authorities were suspicious. He was known to be the owner of the James Ossuary, another extraordinary artifact which had appeared a couple of years earlier. This was a burial box with an inscription linking it to Jesus' brother. The authorities raided Golan's apartment and recovered both the ossuary and the elusive stone. It was time to establish once and for all if both were genuine. So they set up a committee of linguists and scientists to examine them. Looking at the stone, several linguists said 'fake'. Some of the Hebrew, they claimed, was not ancient. Other experts claimed that so little is known of ancient Hebrew that it's impossible to be sure.
The committee turned to geology. Dr Yuval Goren, a geo-archaeologist and head of the Archaeological Institute at Tel-Aviv University, soon found evidence that a team of sophisticated forgers had led the earlier experts astray. The patina on the stone had in fact been manufactured artificially. The charcoal particles which produced the convincing radiocarbon date had been added by hand. The gold fragments hinting at an ancient fire were a clever final addition. The authorities presented their conclusions. They announced that the stone tablet, and the James Ossuary, were elaborate fakes. But who was producing these fakes and how? Dr Goren decided to piece together how the stone tablet had been made. He tracked the origin of the stone itself -- apparently a building block taken from a Crusader castle. It was even possible to work out how the fake patina had been manufactured and the ingredients used. What was clear was the team of forgers included experts in a range of disciplines.
When the police took Oded Golan into custody and searched his apartment they discovered a workshop with a range of tools, materials, and half finished antiquities. This was evidence for an operation of a scale far greater than they had suspected. Investigators have established that collectors around the world have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for artifacts that came through Oded Golan's associates. Dozens of these items have now been examined by Dr Goren, and all have been revealed to be forgeries. Police now suspect that artifacts made by the same team of forgers have found their way into leading museums around the world. Some archaeologists have now concluded that everything that came to market in the last 20 years without clear provenance should be considered a fake. Many of these objects, like the stone tablet which started the investigation, were cynically playing on the desire of many of the collectors to see the bible confirmed as history. For those in search of the temple of Solomon -- their goal is as far away as ever.
Steven Sora does an wonderful job detailing and cataloging all these ancient relics -- and anyone interested in antiquities will not be disappointed by Treasures from Heaven: Relics From Noah's Ark to the Shroud of Turin.
Insight into a strange world.......2005-06-29
Although journalistic rather than scholarly in style the author is to be commended for this comprehensive tour d'horizon of relics. Although obviously pro-relic he tries very hard to be fair. There is a great deal of unsubstantiated medieval myth in this area which he is probably justified in telling straight and leaving the reader to decide.Some of this stuff is very odd indeed.
On a personal note some of these relics gave me a strong impression of evil.Worth reading to see how little the Church of Rome has changed since the middle ages. This all seems very far from the simple Gospel of Christ.
Probably the book on the contemporary relic scene (would you believe they sell these things on E-Bay!) - only the somewhat staccato written style stopped me from rating this higher.
Fascinating book!.......2005-02-05
In Steven Soras newest book, he details the history and traditions behind the most important relics religion has to offer. "Treasures from Heaven" reads like a non-fiction indiana jones tale, it describes the history as well as the modern day search efforts for items such as Noahs Ark, the stories behind the Spear of Destiny, as well as the miracles associated with many relics of the church. From bleeding statues, miraculous healings, to pious priests whose corpses refuse to decompose, this book has it all. Treasures includes many of the most famous relics in addition to some lesser known items, all of which are truly fascinating. I highly recomend this book to everyone! Five stars!
Books:
- The Incomparable Atuk (New Canadian Library)
- The Seven Whispers: A Spiritual Practice for Times Like These
- The Stolen Child: A Novel
- The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics)
- The Trickster of Liberty: Native Heirs to a Wild Baronage
- The View From Pompey's Head
- The Warrior's Apprentice (Vorkosigan)
- To Swim Across the World
- Toward the End of Time
- Ultimas noticias del paraiso (Premio Alfaguara)
Books Index
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The Conformist
