Ruin

Ruin is an acclaimed 1954 novel by Italian Beppe Fenoglio. It's the story of Augustine Braida, a boy who serves the Rabino family, whose first-person account of life in Langhe paints a vivid portrait of early twentieth-century Italian peasant life. Told with terrible humility and great force, it is a compassionate and harrowing narrative of peasant endurance in the face of overwhelming hardship. Born into a working-class family in the town of Alba lying in that part of the Piedmont called LeLanghe, Beppe Fenoglio (1922-1963) belonged to the generation of young Italian writers whose works were molded by their World War II experience and the anti-Fascist Resistance many took part in. Fenoglio fought as a partisan against the German troops occupying Italy, and the major part of his literature is connected with the events of the time.

Literature & Fiction

Fenoglio, Beppe

Contemporary

Marlboro Press

Ruin is an acclaimed 1954 novel by Italian Beppe Fenoglio. It's the story of Augustine Braida, a boy who serves the Rabino family, whose first-person account of life in Langhe paints a vivid portrait of  early twentieth-century Italian peasant life. Told with terrible humility and great force, it is a compassionate and harrowing narrative of peasant endurance in the face of overwhelming hardship. Born into a working-class family in the town of Alba lying in that part of the Piedmont called LeLanghe, Beppe Fenoglio (1922-1963) belonged to the generation of young Italian writers whose works were molded by their World War II experience and the anti-Fascist Resistance many took part in. Fenoglio fought as a partisan against the German troops occupying Italy, and the major part of his literature is connected with the events of the time.

TWO THOUSAND ITALIAN partisans took the city of Alba on October 10, 1944, and two hundred lost it to the Fascists on November 2. Among the bedraggled fighters in this historic siege was Beppe Fenoglio. He later made his debut as a writer with this collection of short stories based on his experiences in the Italian resistance movement. The year 2002 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the collection's original publication in Italy and its first appearance in English. Fenoglio's spare, direct prose still strikes with the staccato-like force of rifle fire. He creates an intimate, unvarnished portrait of his fellow partisans: an ill-equipped, malnourished mix of trained soldiers, eager farmboys, and broken old men. Antiheroes, they all but bumbled their way into playing a crucial role in the Allied victory of World War II, then returned home to nurse their wounds. Fenoglio's cast includes the drunken thief Blister, who opens fire inside a house for a glass of grappa; Hector, a partisan commander who becomes an unemployed mama's boy following the war; and Raul, an intellectual like Fenoglio, who joins the partisans out of ideological commitment, only to find scant room on the battlefield for ideology.

The Twenty-three Days of the City of Alba

Literary

Steerforth

A powerful World War II novel about a young soldier joining the anti-German resistance in occupied Italy, this classic—which touches on everything from wartime dangers and adventures to desperate love—is regarded as one of the greatest works of twentieth-century Italian literature.\nMilton—the name is a nom de guerre—is a member of a partisan band battling Italian Fascists and German forces in the chaotic last years of World War II. Before the war Milton was a student of English literature and a lover of poetry. He was in love with a girl, too, Fulvia, and from time to time she’d invite him over to her rich family’s fine house and have him read to her. Now, in the thick of war, he discovers that handsome Giorgio, his friend and fellow partisan, was sleeping with Fulvia at the time. Furious with jealousy, Milton hastens to have it out with Giorgio, but Giorgio has been captured by the Germans. A Private Affair tells the story of Milton’s mad quest—through mud and fog, rain and terror, while barely evading enemy patrols—to rescue his friend, the better to settle a grudge from a lost world of peace. Beppe Fenoglio’s masterpiece is a peerless story of the violent heart and world.

A Private Affair (The New York Review Books Classics)

NYRB Classics

Un asunto privado

Ediciones Barataria

Una questione privata (Italian Edition)

Einaudi

"'I ventitre giorni della città di Alba', rievocanti episodi partigiani o l'inquietudine dei giovani nel dopoguerra, sono racconti pieni di fatti, con una evidenza cinematografica, con una penetrazione psicologica tutta oggettiva e rivelano un temperamento di narratore crudo ma senza ostentazione, senza compiacenze di stile, asciutto ed esatto." (Italo Calvino)

I ventitré giorni della città di Alba

Short Stories & Anthologies

Oltre quelli ambientati durante la Resistenza che, secondo Gian Luigi Beccaria, "è per Fenoglio, un'esperienza assoluta, che trascende il tempo", il volume raccoglie anche i romanzi più propriamente "langhigiani". Dietro a questa importante produzione sta l'enorme lavoro dello scrittore, dagli anni Cinquanta fino ai suoi ultimi i personaggi e le vicende raccontati con un linguaggio vero e preciso, il piglio svelto e concreto, il modo di narrare per scorci vigorosi, la capacità di consegnare in poche battute personaggi memorabili. Di lui si sono occupati i più acuti studiosi di lingua e letteratura a volte battagliando su datazioni e interpretazioni, ma sempre d'accordo sulla grandezza dell'autore e delle sue opere che uniscono, come in nessuno mai, documento e riuscita artistica.

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See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Fenoglio, Beppe. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Ruin

Ruin

The Twenty-three Days of the City of Alba

A Private Affair (The New York Review Books Classics)

Un asunto privado

Una questione privata (Italian Edition)

I ventitré giorni della città di Alba

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