The serpent;

Malerba, Luigi

Weaver, William (translator)

Farrar. Straus & Giroux

Ithaca Forever: Penelope Speaks, A Novel

<div>After twenty years, Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca, but instead of receiving the homecoming he had hoped for finds himself caught in an intense battle of wills with his faithful and long-suffering wife Penelope. When Penelope recognizes him under the guise of a beggar, she becomes furious with him for not trusting her enough to include her in his plans for ridding the palace of the Suitors.&nbsp; As a result, she plays her own game of fictions to make him suffer for this lack of faith, inspiring jealousy, self-doubt, and misgivings in her husband, the legendary Homeric hero. &nbsp; In this captivating retelling of the Odyssey, Penelope rises as a major force with whom to be reckoned. Shifting between first-person reflections, Ithaca Forever reveals the deeply personal and powerful perspectives of both wife and husband as they struggle for respect and supremacy within a marriage that has been on hold for twenty years. Translated by PEN award-winner Douglas Grant Heise, Luigi Malerba's novel gives us a remarkable version of this greatest work of western literature: Odysseus as a man full of doubts and Penelope as a woman of great depth and strength.</div>

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

University of California Press

Product Description After twenty years, Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca, but instead of receiving the homecoming he had hoped for finds himself caught in an intense battle of wills with his faithful and long-suffering wife Penelope. When Penelope recognizes him under the guise of a beggar, she becomes furious with him for not trusting her enough to include her in his plans for ridding the palace of the Suitors. As a result, she plays her own game of fictions to make him suffer for this lack of faith, inspiring jealousy, self-doubt, and misgivings in her husband, the legendary Homeric hero. In this captivating retelling of the Odyssey, Penelope rises as a major force with whom to be reckoned. Shifting between first-person reflections, Ithaca Forever reveals the deeply personal and powerful perspectives of both wife and husband as they struggle for respect and supremacy within a marriage that has been on hold for twenty years. Translated by PEN award-winner Douglas Grant Heise, Luigi Malerba’s novel gives us a remarkable version of this greatest work of western literature: Odysseus as a man full of doubts and Penelope as a woman of great depth and strength. From the Inside Flap &;Ithaca Forever can be read on its own as a tale of homecoming, revenge, and disguised identities, or, on another level, as a deconstruction of Homer&;s Odyssey. . . . It is Malerba&;s ability to move between Homeric citationality and remarkable inventiveness&;keeping his work fresh and accessible for non-Homeric readers&;which is one of the features that makes this book such a rewarding read.&; &;from the Introduction by Emily Hauser From the Back Cover “Ithaca Forever can be read on its own as a tale of homecoming, revenge, and disguised identities, or, on another level, as a deconstruction of Homer’s Odyssey. . . . It is Malerba’s ability to move between Homeric citationality and remarkable inventiveness—keeping his work fresh and accessible for non-Homeric readers—which is one of the features that makes this book such a rewarding read.” —from the Introduction by Emily Hauser About the Author Luigi Malerba (1927–2008) was a major twentieth-century Italian novelist, screenwriter, and short story writer. He was one of the most prominent writers of the Italian avant-garde literary movement, Gruppo 63, along with founding member Umberto Eco. Among other awards and honors, he was awarded the inaugural Prix Médicis étranger in 1970 and the Premio Grinzane Cavour in 1988. Douglas Grant Heise is a literary translator who lives and works in Levanto, on the Italian Riviera. He is the recipient of the 2017 PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature award. Emily Hauser is a Lecturer in Classics at the University of Reading and the author of the acclaimed Golden Apple trilogy, For the Most Beautiful, For the Winner, and For the Immortal.

Hauser, Emily

Heise, Douglas Grant

Giano and Clarissa are the image of Rome’s intellectual and cultural elite. Married for over twenty years, they are wealthy, childless, in love, and unfaithful. He is an architect and a professor of urban planning who wants to restore Rome’s cityscape, deconstructing modern buildings and entire neighborhoods from the city’s ugly economic boom. She is an attractive forty-something, who enjoys wandering the streets of Rome with no precise destination and an eye out for adventure. But the tenuous balance of their mutual infidelities and hypocrisies is challenged by events outside their control, and the dissolution of this modern marriage mirrors that of the city they both love and hate. Written as a novel within a novel, a meta-fiction of exchange between the two characters’ points of view, this book is direct, humorous and full of surprises. In the drama of its protagonists, it captures an entire microcosm of modern Rome, a world that is deceptively calm and only apparently in order. As the characters crisscross the historical center, Piazza Navona, the Pantheon and the adjacent streets, Malerba exposes the crises that threaten to tear both them and us apart — from climate change to the absence of faith or the security of family, from an obsession with casual (even pathological) sex to the worship of a hyper-technological modernity. Malerba also crisscrosses the porous boundary between fiction and reality. What it would take to restore their marriage — and their narratives — to their “imperfect balance” might be nothing less than an “architectural” re-ordering of superhuman capacities. And so, too, that might be the only salvation for the ravages of modern Rome. "Roman Ghosts" ("Fantasmi Romani"), Malerba’s last novel, was published in 2006. As Rebecca West writes in her introduction to this volume, “To enter [Malerba’s world] in this fine translation is to discover just how engaging an author Luigi Malerba is.” Translated by Miriam Aloisio and Michael Subialka, with an introduction by Rebecca West. Introduction, bibliography. 192 pages.

Roman Ghosts (Italica Press Modern Italian Fiction Series)

Contemporary

Italica Press, Inc.

Fantômes romains

Gremese

Die nackten Masken.

dtv.

König Ohneschuh.

Fischer (Tb.), Frankfurt

Taschenabenteuer. Dreiundfünfzig Geschichten.

Koeppel, Matthias

Wagenbach

Le maschere: Romanzo (Scrittori italiani) (Italian Edition)

A. Mondadori

Itaca per sempre: Romanzo (Scrittori italiani) (Italian Edition)

Mondadori

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