The Novel of Ferrara
The Novel of Ferrara brings together Giorgio Bassani's six classics, fully revised by the author at the end of his life.



Set in the northern Italian town of Ferrara before, during, and after the Second World War, these interlocking stories present a fully rounded world of unforgettable characters: the respected doctor whose homosexuality is tolerated until he is humiliatingly exposed by an exploitative youth; a survivor of the Nazi death camps whose neighbors' celebration of his return gradually turns to ostracism; a young man discovering the ugly, treacherous price that people will pay for a sense of belonging; the Jewish aristocrat whose social position has been erased; the indomitable schoolteacher, Celia Trotti, whose Communist idealism disturbs and challenges a postwar generation.



The Novel of Ferrara memorializes not only the Ferrarese people, but the city itself, which assumes a character and a voice deeply inflected by the Jewish community to which the narrator belongs.



Contains mature themes.
1128113604
The Novel of Ferrara
The Novel of Ferrara brings together Giorgio Bassani's six classics, fully revised by the author at the end of his life.



Set in the northern Italian town of Ferrara before, during, and after the Second World War, these interlocking stories present a fully rounded world of unforgettable characters: the respected doctor whose homosexuality is tolerated until he is humiliatingly exposed by an exploitative youth; a survivor of the Nazi death camps whose neighbors' celebration of his return gradually turns to ostracism; a young man discovering the ugly, treacherous price that people will pay for a sense of belonging; the Jewish aristocrat whose social position has been erased; the indomitable schoolteacher, Celia Trotti, whose Communist idealism disturbs and challenges a postwar generation.



The Novel of Ferrara memorializes not only the Ferrarese people, but the city itself, which assumes a character and a voice deeply inflected by the Jewish community to which the narrator belongs.



Contains mature themes.
34.99 In Stock
The Novel of Ferrara

The Novel of Ferrara

by Giorgio Bassani, André Aciman

Narrated by P. J. Ochlan

Unabridged — 32 hours, 35 minutes

The Novel of Ferrara

The Novel of Ferrara

by Giorgio Bassani, André Aciman

Narrated by P. J. Ochlan

Unabridged — 32 hours, 35 minutes

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Overview

The Novel of Ferrara brings together Giorgio Bassani's six classics, fully revised by the author at the end of his life.



Set in the northern Italian town of Ferrara before, during, and after the Second World War, these interlocking stories present a fully rounded world of unforgettable characters: the respected doctor whose homosexuality is tolerated until he is humiliatingly exposed by an exploitative youth; a survivor of the Nazi death camps whose neighbors' celebration of his return gradually turns to ostracism; a young man discovering the ugly, treacherous price that people will pay for a sense of belonging; the Jewish aristocrat whose social position has been erased; the indomitable schoolteacher, Celia Trotti, whose Communist idealism disturbs and challenges a postwar generation.



The Novel of Ferrara memorializes not only the Ferrarese people, but the city itself, which assumes a character and a voice deeply inflected by the Jewish community to which the narrator belongs.



Contains mature themes.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Fernanda Eberstadt

Giorgio Bassani belongs to that extraordinary flowering of Italian Jewish writers, from Natalia Ginzburg to Primo Levi, who came of age under Fascism and thus grew up skeptical, allergic both to absolutism and pious rhetoric…Concentration camp inmates recounted their nightmares of returning home and finding the door locked to them or of discovering that their family members, like Geo Josz's fellow townsmen, were indifferent to their tales. Bassani, in these cultivated worldly-wise stories, so steeped in tenderness, rage and loss, is like someone returned from the underworld to bear witness…Bassani's history of the "little segregated universe" from which he was expelled is essential reading for anyone thirsting for an understanding of the complex density of Europe's multicultural inheritance, or wondering whether the world we know might once again be falling for the temptations of fascism.

From the Publisher

"A book of immense pathos, eloquence, elegiac splendor."— Harold Bloom

"The power of Bassani’s writing is such that, for a moment, his transitory world seems beautifully everlasting."— Sam Sacks Wall Street Journal

"Essential reading for anyone thirsting for an understanding of the complex density of Europe’s multicultural inheritance."— Fernanda Eberstadt New York Times Book Review

"By connecting with [Giorgio] Bassani’s souls, and sometimes by even becoming one (or all) of them, McKendrick brings to life—anew—the miracle of translation."— John Florio Prize for Italian translation shortlist citation

"[Bassani] could rightly place himself among the great Italian realist writers.… McKendrick is alert to Bassani’s cosmopolitanism and deep affinity for the English literary tradition, and doesn’t obscure the allusions Bassani certainly intended."— Laura Kolbe New York Review of Books

"The fiction of this most dispassionate, most merciless and clear-eyed chronicler of the sequences and consequences of history?in stories almost always about the city’s decisions about whom to include or exclude as its own?is, in the end, against all the odds, a declaration of love."— Ali Smith Guardian

"Sitting beside the author watching a fire blaze—destructive, beautiful, and above all compelling—is largely how it feels reading Bassani’s work."— Tim Parks Harper’s

"As a mirror held up to Bassani’s generation, The Novel of Ferrara embodies a cautious optimism about how much this generation–and the ones to follow–might learn from its forebears’ mistakes. In its clear-eyed realism about the limits to such learning, as well as in the empathy with which it insists on pursuing it, Bassani’s Novel is a remarkable achievement."— Marta Figlerowicz Yale Review

"Bassani’s monumental elegy to the city’s doomed Jewish community restores the dignity that it is owed even as it compels us to relive the devastation endured."— Diane Cole Jewish Review of Books

"In a new translation by Jamie McKendrick, [The Novel of Ferrara] conveys a feeling of haze and depth, a sense of an old and inscrutable magic no less entrancing for often being dark."— Talya Zaks Forward

Product Details

BN ID: 2940173067388
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Publication date: 09/30/2019
Edition description: Unabridged
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