Born Twice
-
- $7.99
-
- $7.99
Publisher Description
When a breach birth leaves Paulo severely disabled, his father, the articulate, unsentimental Professor Frigerio, struggles to come to terms with his son’s condition. Face to face with his own limitations, Frigerio confronts the strange way society around him handles Paolo’s handicaps and observes his surprising gifts. In spare, deeply affecting episodes, the professor of language explores the nuanced boundaries between “normal” and “disabled” worlds.
A remarkable memoir of fathering, winner of the 2001 Strega Prize, Italy’s most prestigious literary honor, Born Twice is noted Italian author Guiseppe Pontiggia’s American debut. Sometimes meditative, often humorous, and always probing, Pontiggia’s haunting characters linger and resound long after the book is done.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Veteran Italian writer Pontiggia illuminates "the distance that exists between the disabled and us" in this compassionate, deeply moral novel, his first to appear in English. When high school teacher Frigerio's son Paolo is born, a physician's ineptitude leaves the boy with permanent disabilities. Frigerio and his wife, Franca, are informed by a therapist that Paolo suffers from a neurological disorder that slows his learning and permanently hinders his motor skills, though he is quite lucid and intelligent. The novel comprises brief vignettes over Paolo's first 30 years, in which Frigerio offers wry observations about his complicated relationship with the boy and about the way others react to him. Frigerio parses doctors' examinations for hidden meanings, noting that conversations are conducted so that "no one ever has to say the truth." Franca provides a thorny counterpoint kind to Paolo and justifiably impatient with Frigerio but she is perhaps less realistic about the child's condition. Frigerio muses on the many ways people most notably an odious, manipulative principal who uses a bad leg as a psychological weapon exploit their own disabilities. Franca and their other son, Alfredo, have only bit parts; even Paolo often seems like a cipher hovering in the background. But Frigerio dogged, intelligent and self-aware will win readers over with an array of casual yet profound insights into the human condition ("Why not test for stupidity as a planetary epidemic?") and his fierce dedication to his son.
