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Showing 1 - 12 of
12 matches in All Departments
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Accabadora (Paperback)
Michela Murgia; Translated by Silvester Mazzarella
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R306
R248
Discovery Miles 2 480
Save R58 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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One of Elena Ferrante's best 40 books by female writers When Maria,
the fourth child of a widow, is adopted by the old and childless
Bonaria Urrai, her life is instantly transformed - she finally has
the love and affection she craves. But her new 'soul mother' is
keeping something hidden from her, a secret life that is intimately
bound-up with Sardinia's ancient traditions and customs. Midwife to
the dying, easing their suffering and sometimes ending it, she is
revered and feared in equal measure as the village's Accabadora.
Bonaria tries to shield the girl from the truth about her role as
an angel of mercy, until, moved by the pleas of a young man
crippled in an accident, she breaks her golden rule of familial
consent. The consequences - for Bonaria, for Maria and for the
whole village, are devastating - and cause a rift between the two
women that can only be bridge by another death. Translated from the
Italian by Silvester Mazzarella
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The Time in Between (Paperback)
Marcello Fois; Translated by Silvester Mazzarella
1
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R310
R278
Discovery Miles 2 780
Save R32 (10%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Vincenzo Chironi sets foot for the first time on the island of
Sardinia - 'a raft in the middle of the Mediterranean' - in 1943, a
year of famine and malaria. All he has with him is an old document
as proof of his name and date of birth, but to find out who he
really is he has had to undertake an even more stressful journey
than the one he has just faced in the steamer from mainland Italy
to Sardinia. At NĂşoro he will find his grandfather, a master
blacksmith, who will act as a substitute father but also as an
accomplice to him, and his aunt Marianna, who greets the unexpected
arrival of a previously unknown nephew as an opportunity to redeem
a life previously afflicted by misfortune. Years later, when the
presence of Vincenzo Chironi in NĂşoro seems to have become taken
for granted, as natural as the sea and rocks, his blood asserts
itself. Vincenzo meets Cecilia, a beautiful girl with eyes of an
undefinable shade who is a wartime refugee from elsewhere in
Sardinia, and falling in love seems the only course open to either
of them. Never mind that she is already engaged to Nicola, a boy
with whom Vincenzo is indirectly connected by marriage through his
aunt Marianna . . . Even if it may be a fact that "disobedience
must involve punishment", it may also be true that love cannot
avoid adding the latest link to an endless chain.
The bitch. That's what the crew call me. The bitch. They say it
behind my back. But I can hear them. My name's Helen, I was born in
Sparta, but I went away for love. They used to say I was the most
beautiful woman in the world. The minstrels are already making up
stories about how little I've won and how much I've lost. Lying
tales. They weren't there, after all. But I was. From her childhood
in Sparta, through the turbulent years of her marriage, and of
course her disappearance with Paris and its consequences, Helen of
Troy tells her own story. In a lyrical and musical style, Helen
sheds her legendary persona and walks from the page as a real woman
of flesh and blood; the archetype of all the women who, throughout
history, have followed their hearts, forsaking wealth and power.
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Bloodlines (Paperback)
Galleria Regionale Della Sicilia; Translated by Silvester Mazzarella
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R515
R434
Discovery Miles 4 340
Save R81 (16%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Endowing family horrors with mythical resonance, Marcello Fois
creates an unforgettable tale of twentieth-century Sardinia. When
Guiseppe Mundula first sees Michele Angelo Chironi across the
corridor of a Sardinian orphanage, the blacksmith realizes that he
has found the son and heir he never knew he needed. And when a few
years later, Michele himself looks down from the ladder on which he
is working and sees the beautiful Mercede, he knows that he has
found the woman he will marry. So begins Fois' magisterial domestic
epic of the lives, loves, and losses of the Chironi family as they
struggle through war and fascism and their own tragedy.
An NYRB Classics Original
Tove Jansson excelled at the brief tale, writing stories that in
their short spans unfold to reveal entire worlds. This is true of
her internationally syndicated cartoon strip about a family of
hippo-like creatures, the Moomins; of her beloved Moomin novels;
and of her best-selling books for adults, like "The Summer Book."
Until now, however, Jansson's short stories have been nearly
impossible to find in the United States. This volume brings
together, for the first time in English, a generous selection of
stories from the most fruitful period of her career, from her
earliest collected stories, dating from the early 1970s, to her
mature work, written not long before her death in 2001. In them are
moments of the sublime and the mundane, as well as small heroisms
and large griefs. Unsentimental, yet kind and humane, Jansson's
short stories complement and enlarge our understanding of a giant
of world literature.
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Bloodlines (Paperback)
Marcello Fois; Translated by Silvester Mazzarella
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R282
R253
Discovery Miles 2 530
Save R29 (10%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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When Giuseppe Mundula first sees Michele Angelo Chironi across the
corridor of a Sardinian orphanage, the reserved blacksmith realises
he has found the son and heir he never knew he needed. And when, a
few years later, Michele himself looks down from a church rooftop
and sees the beautiful Mercede, the quiet orphan realises he has
found the woman he will marry. So begins Marcello Fois' magisterial
domestic epic of the lives and loves of the Chironi family, as they
struggle through war and fascism. Deftly endowing familial horrors
with mythical resonance, Fois creates a Dantesque triptych that
inscribes the history of twentieth-century Sardinia onto a single
misbegotten household.
"A superior police procedural" Mark Sanderson, The Times Crime Club
"Northern Italy's answer to Inspector Montalbano" Alessandro
Baricco September 2008. Commissario Arcadipane arrives at the scene
of a macabre discovery: the bones of twelve men and women buried in
the countryside near Torino. By the next morning, a task force
specialising in mass graves from WWII is already in place. But
something doesn't feel right: one of the femurs shows signs of an
operation that couldn't have taken place before the seventies.
Suspecting a cover-up, Arcadipane launches his own investigation,
enlisting his old mentor, Corso Bramard, long retired, and Isa, a
young officer still haunted by the unexplained death of her father.
These mismatched allies - one at last at peace, one jaded to the
point of breakdown and one under a permanent disciplinary cloud -
will unveil a cruel political conspiracy that someone wants covered
up for the second time. Translated from the Italian by Silvester
Mazzarella
Edith Soedergran's vital, compelling and very personal poems have
been translated into many languages, and several times into
English. Written for the most part when she was dying of
tuberculosis in a remote Finnish frontier village only a short
train journey away from revolutionary Petrograd, they are a major
contribution to European modernism. These letters are almost all
that remains to us of her work, apart from the poetry. The most
personal of them were written between 1919 and 1923 to two
like-minded young Finland-Swedish writers, Hagar Olsson and Elmer
Diktonius. They are unusually spontaneous and show Soedergran in
many moods, passionate and caring, intransigent, desperate for
human contact, and racked by religious doubts that threaten to
stifle the very poetry for which she lived. The collection is
accompanied by an introduction and notes which both contextualize
the letters and greatly enhance our understanding of Soedergran's
life and poetry."
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Accabadora (Paperback, New)
Michela Murgia; Translated by Silvester Mazzarella
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R419
R370
Discovery Miles 3 700
Save R49 (12%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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A stunning portrait of rural Italy in the 1950s and "a touching
meditation on life and death and the power of love to bind,
transcend, and let go" (Publishers Weekly). At one time betrothed
to a fallen soldier, Bonaria Urrai of Sardinia has a long-held
covenant with the dead. Midwife to the dying, easing their
suffering and sometimes ending it, she is revered and feared in
equal measure as her village's Accabadora. When Bonaria adopts
Maria, the unloved fourth child of a widow, she tries to shield the
girl from the truth about her role as an angel of mercy. Moved by
the pleas of a young man crippled in an accident, Bonaria breaks
her golden rule of familial consent. In the recriminations that
follow, Maria rejects her and flees Sardinia for Turin. Adrift in
the big city, Maria strives as ever to find love and acceptance,
but her efforts are overshadowed by the creeping knowledge of a
debt unpaid, of a duty and destiny that must one day be hers.
Accabadora is Michaela Murgia's exceptional English-language debut
and has been awarded seven major literary prizes, including Italy's
prestigious Premio Campiello. "Poignant, honest, and magical, this
is a dazzling story for the senses, and one I will not soon
forget." --Susan Sherman, author of The Little Russian
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Perfect Light (Paperback)
Marcello Fois; Translated by Silvester Mazzarella
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R258
Discovery Miles 2 580
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Cristian is enterprising and determined. Maddalena is tenacious and
quite able to imagine - and defend - her own future. Cristian and
Maddalena have always known each other, and if fate had not gone
awry they might already be married. But between them, exactly in
the middle, there is Domenico: Cristian's childhood friend who has
grown up alongside him like a brother. And when Cristian succumbs
to the fate of the Chironis - that curse of illnesses, murders and
suicides that has blighted his family over the years - it is
Domenico that Maddalena marries. Taking his trilogy of the Chironi
family up to the present day, Marcello Fois has woven a delicately
detailed story, full of dormant passions, plot twists, betrayals
and reconciliations. The epic scope and the dramatic tension of his
writing means that while his trilogy might be the story of one
family on a tiny island, it has a universality, a humanity and a
power to speak to anyone of us.
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The Time in Between (Hardcover)
Marcello Fois; Translated by Silvester Mazzarella
1
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R533
R436
Discovery Miles 4 360
Save R97 (18%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Vincenzo Chironi sets foot for the first time on the island of
Sardinia - 'a raft in the middle of the Mediterranean' - in 1943, a
year of famine and malaria. All he has with him is an old document
as proof of his name and date of birth, but to find out who he
really is he has had to undertake an even more stressful journey
than the one he has just faced in the steamer from mainland Italy
to Sardinia. At Nuoro he will find his grandfather, a master
blacksmith, who will act as a substitute father but also as an
accomplice to him, and his aunt Marianna, who greets the unexpected
arrival of a previously unknown nephew as an opportunity to redeem
a life previously afflicted by misfortune. Years later, when the
presence of Vincenzo Chironi in Nuoro seems to have become taken
for granted, as natural as the sea and rocks, his blood asserts
itself. Vincenzo meets Cecilia, a beautiful girl with eyes of an
undefinable shade who is a wartime refugee from elsewhere in
Sardinia, and falling in love seems the only course open to either
of them. Never mind that she is already engaged to Nicola, a boy
with whom Vincenzo is indirectly connected by marriage through his
aunt Marianna . . . Even if it may be a fact that "disobedience
must involve punishment", it may also be true that love cannot
avoid adding the latest link to an endless chain.
Italy is on the brink of collapse. Borders are closed, banks
withhold money, the postal service stalls. Armed gangs of
drug-fuelled youths roam the countryside. Leonardo was a famous
writer and professor before a sex scandal ended his marriage and
career. Heading north in search of her new husband, his ex-wife
leaves their daughter and her son in his care. If he is to take
them to safety, he will need to find a quality he has never
possessed: courage.
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