An overlooked classic of Italian literature, this epic and
unforgettable novel recounts one man's long and turbulent life in
revolutionary Italy. At the age of eighty-three and nearing death,
Carlo Altoviti has decided to write down the confessions of his
long life. He remembers everything: his unhappy childhood in the
kitchens of the Castle of Fratta; romantic entanglements during the
siege of Genoa; revolutionary fighting in Naples; and so much more.
Throughout, Carlo lives only for his twin passions in life: his
dream of a unified, free Italy and his undying love for the
magnificent but inconstant Pisana. Peopled by a host of
unforgettable characters - including drunken smugglers, saintly
nuns, scheming priests, Napoleon and Lord Byron - this is an epic
historical novel that tells the remarkable and inseparable stories
of one man's life and the history of Italy's unification. Ippolito
Nievo was born in 1831 in Padua. Confessions of an Italian, written
in 1858 and published posthumously in 1867, is his best known work.
A patriot and a republican, he took part with Garibaldi and his
Thousand in the momentous 1860 landing in Sicily to free the south
from Bourbon rule. Nievo died before he reached the age of thirty,
when his ship, en route from Palermo to Naples, went down in the
Tyrrhenian Sea in early 1861. He was, Italo Calvino once said, the
sole Italian novelist of the nineteenth century in the 'daredevil,
swashbuckler, rambler' mould so dear to other European literatures.
Frederika Randall has worked as a cultural journalist for many
years. Her previous translations include Luigi Meneghello's Deliver
Us and Ottavio Cappellani's Sicilian Tragedee and Sergio Luzzatto's
Padre Pio: Miracles and Politics in a Secular Age. Lucy Riall is
Professor of Comparative History at the European University
Institute. Her many books include Garibaldi. Invention of a Hero.
'Of all the furore that came out of the Risorgimento, only Manzoni
and Nievo really matter today' - Umberto Eco 'The one 19th century
Italian novel which has [for an Italian reader] that charm and
fascination so abundant in foreign literatures' - Italo Calvino
'Perhaps the greatest Italian novel of the nineteenth century' -
Roberto Carnero 'A spirited appeal for liberte, egalite and
fraternite, the novel is also an astute, scathing and amusing human
comedy, a tale of love, sex and betrayal, of great wealth and
grinding poverty, of absolute power and scheming submission, of
idealism and cynicism, courage and villainy' - The Literary
Encyclopedia
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