Last Summer in the City
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- 5,99 €
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- 5,99 €
Publisher Description
A cult classic of Italian literature, published in English for the first time, with an afterword by André Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name.
'A masterpiece' - Le Figaro
'Dazzling in every detail' - Elle
In the late 1960s, Leo Gazzara leads a precarious life in Rome. He spends his time in an alcoholic haze, bouncing between hotels, bars, uninspiring jobs, romantic entanglements and the homes of his rich friends. Leo drifts, aimless and alone.
But on the evening of his thirtieth birthday, he meets Arianna. All night they drive the city in Leo’s run-down Alfa Romeo, talking and talking. They eat brioche for breakfast, drink through the dawn, drive to the sea and back. A whirlwind beginning. What follows is the story of the year Leo fell in love and lost everything.
Intense, romantic, witty and devastating, Last Summer in the City is a forgotten classic of Italian literature which offers an intoxicating portrait of two lonely people, pushing and pulling each other away and back again.
'The most beautiful love story of the year' - Il Giornale
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Calligarich's evocative English-language debut, originally published in Italy in 1973, follows the travails of a journalist in Rome. Leo Gazzara, 30, a self-described "pretentious snob... at the end of tether," recalls his struggles of the previous year. Leo moved to Rome because of its proximity to the sea, which he's always loved, and for a job at a magazine that soon went out of business, leaving him to find a spot at a sports newspaper. He meets Arianna at a party and they start seeing each other, though she rebuffs his first declaration of love. In May, they go to the sea, where they trespass on private beaches and in vacant vacation villas. In June, Leo starts and abandons a job in TV, sleeps with an ex, and tries to ignore Arianna, who is dating someone else. As Leo and his friend Graziano Castelvecchio write a film script, Calligarich conjures Italy's piazzas, parties, beaches, and bars with a mood reminiscent of A Movable Feast, and the friends' project is halted by an affecting tragedy. While Leo's unexamined poor treatment of others, especially Arianna, feels a bit dated, the feeling that Leo is alone in the world is poignantly conveyed. The scenery alone makes this worth a look.
