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by Elsa Morante

ISBN: 0380418894
Author: Elsa Morante
Language: English
Publisher: Avon Books (January 1, 1979)
Category: Genre Fiction
Subcategory: Literature
Rating: 4.7
Votes: 876
Size Fb2: 1557 kb
Size ePub: 1708 kb
Size Djvu: 1104 kb
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Elsa Morante Genre Fiction English

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History: A Novel (Italian: La Storia) is a novel by Italian author Elsa Morante, generally regarded as her most famous and controversial work

History: A Novel (Italian: La Storia) is a novel by Italian author Elsa Morante, generally regarded as her most famous and controversial work. Published in 1974, it narrates the story of a partly Jewish woman, Ida Ramundo, and her two sons Antonio (nicknamed "Ninnarieddu", "Ninnuzzu" or "Nino") and Giuseppe ("Useppe") in Rome, during and immediately after the Second World War. The Italian title La Storia can be translated as either "History" or "The Story"; the ambiguity is lost in translation.

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The book is brimful with insight. By turns devastating and otherworldly, Morante's novel is a classic, and Goldstein's new translation should return to it the attention it deserves.

History was written nearly thirty years after Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia spent a year in hiding among remote .

History was written nearly thirty years after Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia spent a year in hiding among remote farming villages in the mountains south of Rome.

During World War II, Elsa Morante and her husband, antifascist novelist Alberto Moravia, fled the German occupation in Italy. Out of this experience came History, the moving saga of a widow's courage.

by. Morante, Elsa, ca. 1912-1985. Books for People with Print Disabilities. Internet Archive Books.

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Immediately download the History: A Novel summary, chapter-by-chapter analysis, book notes, essays, quotes, character descriptions, lesson plans . Everything you need to understand or teach History (novel) by Elsa Morante. Download the Study Guide. History Summary & Study Guide.

Immediately download the History: A Novel summary, chapter-by-chapter analysis, book notes, essays, quotes, character descriptions, lesson plans, and more - everything you need for studying or teaching History: A Novel. Download Lesson Plans. 30 History: A Novel Lessons. 180 Multiple Choice Questions.

History: A Novel is a novel by Italian author Elsa Morante, largely seen to be her most famous and controversial work. Published in 1974, it narrates the story of a woman, Ida Ramundo, and her two. I want to read this book.

History was written nearly thirty years after Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia spent a year in hiding among remote farming villages in the mountains south of Rome. There she witnessed the full impact of the war and first formed the ambition to write an account of what history - the great political events driven by men of power, wealth, and ambition - does when it reaches the realm of ordinary people struggling for life and bread.The central character in this powerful and unforgiving novel is Ida Mancuso, a schoolteacher whose husband has died and whose feckless teenage son treats the war as his playground. A German soldier on his way to North Africa rapes her, falls in love with her, and leaves her pregnant with a boy whose survival becomes Ida's passion. Around these two other characters come and go, each caught up by the war which is like a river in flood. We catch glimpses of bombing raids, street crimes, a cattle car from which human cries emerge, an Italian soldier succumbing to frostbite on the Russian front, the dumb endurance of peasants who have lived their whole lives with nothing and now must get by with less than nothing. "One of the few novels in any language that renders the full horror of Hitler's war, the war that never gets into the books . . ."-- Alfred Kazan, Esquire"A storyteller who spellbinds."-- Stephen Spender, The New York Review of Books"A marvel of a novel . . . all the pleasures that fiction can offer."-- Doris Grumbach, Saturday Review

Comments:

Shazel

The book is a durge, dedicated to the supressed, to the poor, to the uneducated, to the half witted, to the victims of war, to the victims of rape, to loving animals and the city of Rome, ravaged and raped and over run in war and populated by humans trying to survive. Long and relentless in style, with dense whirling passages of interior monologues and sharp observations as Elsa Morante jumps from one character to another (all linked) or from human to animal. Each chapter is lead off with an actual account of what happened in world history that year. This sets the tone for events contained within but by the end its proves to be a constantly changing onslaught of human suffering. This is a book that takes on all of our societal institutions and shreds them in exposing what there are at the core, subject sadly to the worst of what we are as human beings.
One can apply these same observations to our world today.
The most redeeming and joyous passages make this tragic story bearable, such as when the author gives voice and consideration to pets and animals. Not light reading and needs a real commitment as it grabs you and does not want to let you go. Morante weaves a dense fabric that is a history of one, one women and those to come in and out of her life; this is the other history, the one "we don't study" in school.

Rrd

This book starts off slowly and then inexorably extends its grip on you. You will feel the reality of life for ordinary people in WWII, but it also goes beyond. Morante's tender portrayals of children and animals not only reveal her acute observation, but a deeper humanity. Useppe surely stands out as a feat of characterization, almost an archetype. Her illustrations of the minor things of daily life are dealt with such sympathy yet tinted with an element of dry humour underlying the whole. The author evokes well the inner process of grief, the paths of the mind after loss.

The book embraces the life of the common person, the woman in the street, the uneducated, the underprivileged. It celebrates the wonder to be found in everyday moments, yet underlying all, a doom-laden strength, the motif of death. It is painstakingly researched, based on actual events, lending an engaging authenticity... as the author is to a large extent, describing herself, and the real people of Rome. I found the translation very natural. Its a fairly easy read and I got through most of it before I even noticed what a thick volume it is.

Structurally it is flawed, however. The final 80 pages or so drag and could have been cut without any harm to the whole. It is as though the author tacked on a long, unnecessary postscript in order to elaborate on her underlying philosophical themes.

Kann

This compelling and super poignant novel chronicles the story of four main human characters and three animals(!) over several years during and just after WWII. Set in Rome during that period of tremendous economic and political stress, it follows the lives of Ida Mancuso, an elementary school teacher, her two sons, Nino and Useppe and a family friend, Davide Segre, a Jewish anarchist/intellectual--all in a gradual downward spiral as Italy's ill-considered military adventures pull the country into economic privation and social chaos. It is one of the clearest explanations of what happens to society's poorest and most defenseless during such times.

Author Elsa Morante's inclusion of three animals (two dogs and a cat) in the lives of her main characters goes beyond anything that you will ever read. The three are given feelings, voices, thinking processes and actions that make them the moral exemplars in the midst of human disarray and crisis. It's hard to do justice to how strong and credible these characters are, but they often do carry the novel forward and give it some semblance of hope and of what we like to think of as "humanity" when most needed.

Overall, this is an amazing book, with clear connections to the styles of Zola, Grass and even Tolstoy. It is tragedy on a grand scale as well as an indirect demand for greater social awareness, justice and a higher degree of daily humanity. .