Lies and Sorcery
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
An Italian master's magnum opus about three generations of women, now in the first-ever unabridged English translation.
Winner of the 2024 Society of Authors John Florio Prize for for the best translation from Italian and the 2024 American Literary Translator Association's Italian Prose in Translation Prize
Elsa Morante is one of the titans of twentieth-century literature—Natalia Ginzburg said she was the writer of her own generation that she most admired—and yet her work remains little known in the United States. Written during World War II, Morante’s celebrated first novel, Lies and Sorcery, is in the grand tradition of Stendhal, Tolstoy, and Proust, spanning the lives of three generations of wildly eccentric women.
The story is set in Sicily and told by Elisa, orphaned young and raised by a “fallen woman.” For years Elisa has lived in an imaginary world of her own; now, however, her guardian has died, and the young woman feels that she must abandon her fantasy life to confront the truth of her family’s tortured and dramatic history. Elisa is a seductive, if less than reliable, spinner of stories, and the reader is drawn into a tale of secrets, intrigue, and treachery, which, as it proceeds, is increasingly revealed to be an exploration of a legacy of political and social injustice. Throughout, Morante’s elegant writing—and her drive to get at the heart of her characters’ complex relationships and all-too self-destructive behavior—holds us spellbound.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This 1948 novel from Morante (1912–1985), appearing unabridged in English for the first time in a translation by McPhee, is a thrilling saga of love and madness in a southern Italian city. The narrator, a young woman whose guardian recently died, tells the tale in hopes of freeing herself from the memories of her ancestors, including dissolute nobleman Teodoro Massia, who married young governess Cesira sometime around the turn of the 20th century. When Cesira learns her husband is actually destitute, she begins to hate him, but their daughter, Anna, worships her doting, drunken father and matures into a dreamy, isolated young woman convinced of her own superiority. Encountering her wealthy, beautiful, and cruel cousin Edoardo Cerentano, son of Teodoro's sister, Anna falls in love, and the teenage cousins embark on a passionate yet chaste affair. After a bout of illness, Edoardo abandons Anna, pushing her off on his friend, the resentful, intelligent student Francesco di Salvi, who adores Anna and breaks up with his girlfriend Rosaria, a village girl and sex worker he'd previously wanted to marry. Seduced and blackmailed by Edoardo, Rosaria eventually emerges as the most sympathetic of the four, the only one capable of sympathy and forgiveness. Maintaining an ironic distance, Morante's lengthy but propulsive narrative describes in detail the characters' desires, fears, and superstitions, as well as the stultifying class divisions, religiosity, and financial troubles that define their lives. It's a tremendous accomplishment.
