Hello, readers! It is Monday again! As it is Monday, welcome to another #5OnMyTBR update. The rule is relatively simple. I must pick five books from my to-be-read piles that fit the week’s theme.

This week’s theme: No Prompt

Since there is still no prompt this week, I opted to feature works of Italian literature, following my previous features of French, German, and Spanish literature. This aligns with my pivot toward European literature, following my initial focus on works of Asian literature for the first half of the year. Without ado, here are works of Italian literature I am looking forward to.

5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook where you choose five books from your to-be-read pile that fit that week’s theme. If you’d like more info, head over to the announcement post!

Title: Fontamara
Author: Ignazio Silone
Translator: Eric Mosbacher
Publisher: Everyman
Publishing Date: November 15, 1994
No. of Pages: 160

Synopsis: 

It is Silone’s first novel and is among his most famous works. It received worldwide acclaim and sold more than a million and a half copies in twenty-seven languages. It was first published in German translation in Zurich, Switzerland in 1933, and was published in English by Penguin Books in September 1934. Fontamara is derived from the Italian ‘Fonte Amara’ (Bitter Stream.) Appearing on the eve of the Spanish Civil War, and published just a few months after Hitler came to power, when the world was beginning to take sides for or against fascism, the novel had a galvanising effect on public opinion. Fontamara ‘became the very symbol of resistance’ and ‘is widely agreed to have played a major role as a document of anti-Fascist propaganda outside Italy in the late 1930s,’ as it criticises the deceitful and immoral nature of the Fascist party and its followers.

Fontamara is a fictional small rural village in Marsica in the Abruzzo region. The people (the Fontamaresi) are poor and the village is very remote to the extent that the citizens are unaware of world events such as the rise of Fascism. There is a tremendous gap between the ‘’cafoni’’ (peasants) who populate ‘’Fontamara’’ and those who live in the city. The Fontamaresi work the Earth to survive, turn to emigration as a means of economic improvement and are ignorant to events happening outside of their town. They are cut off from the rest of Italy and thus unaffected by modernity and new technology. The Impresario is a stark contrast to the Fontamaresi, who have laboured for centuries to little avail, as he quickly became the richest man in the region and embodies the power, authority and immorality of the Fascists. The Fontamaresi are exploited due to their naïvety and ignorance, the women are raped by the squadristi (a group of Fascists), Berardo Viola makes the ultimate sacrifice to allow the continued distribution of clandestine texts to spread the word about socialism and encourage rebellion against Fascism and at the end the majority of the population are killed at the hands of the Government. (Source: Goodreads)

Title: Marcovaldo (or The seasons in the city)
Author: Italo Calvino
Translator (from Italian): William Weaver
Publisher: Harcourt Brace
Publishing Date: 1983 (1963)
No. of Pages: 121

Synopsis: 

An unskilled worker in a drab northern Italian industrial city of the 1950s and 1960s, Marcovaldo has a practiced eye for spotting natural beauty and an unquenchable longing to come a little closer to the unspoiled world of his imagining. Much to the puzzlement of his wife, his children, his boss, and his neighbors, he chases his dreams, gives rein to his fantasies, tries – with more ingenuousness than skill – to lessen his burden and that of those around him. The results are never the anticipated ones.

Title: Bread and Wine
Author: Ignazio Silone
Translator (from Italian): Harvey Fergusson II
Publisher: Time Life Books
Publishing Date: 1965
No. of Pages: 284

Synopsis: 

(Editor’s Preface) Ignazio Silone’s Bread and Wine is a novel of great force and subtlety, with a deceptively simple look about it. It can be read as a picaresque and occasionally very funny, tale of adventure in the anti-Mussolini underground in Italy – as a kind of political thriller. But it is, of course, a great deal more than an adventure story. At bottom, it is a statement of the awful dilemma that faced men of good will in Europe during the mid-1930s, when the democracies seemed weak and inept; the Fascists seemed powerful and resolute; and the Communists, who offered an alternative to Fascism, were showing themselves to be no less an evil. In the circumstances, where were men of good will to return? How did one go about fighting for justice? Where was one to find allies?

Title: One, None and a Hundred Thousand
Author: Luigi Pirandello

Synopsis: 

One, None, and One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello is a profound exploration of identity, perception, and the fluidity of the self. In this novel, Pirandello presents a protagonist, Vitangelo Moscarda, who begins to question his sense of self after a casual remark about his appearance. This seemingly trivial event leads Moscarda to realize that he is perceived differently by every person he encounters, resulting in a crisis of identity.

The novel delves into themes of existentialism, highlighting the disparity between how we see ourselves and how others perceive us. Moscarda’s journey illustrates the fragmentation of identity, as he grapples with the notion that he is not a single, fixed individual but rather a multiplicity of selves shaped by the perspectives of others. The title itself — One, None, and One Hundred Thousand—reflects this idea, signifying the many versions of a person that exist in the minds of others, as well as the elusive nature of true self-knowledge. (Source: Goodreads)

Title: Zeno’s Conscience
Author: Italo Svevo

Synopsis: 

Long hailed as a seminal work of modernism in the tradition of Joyce and Kafka, and now available in a supple new English translation, Italo Svevo’s charming and splendidly idiosyncratic novel conducts readers deep into one hilariously hyperactive and endlessly self-deluding mind. The mind in question belongs to one Zeno Cosini, a neurotic Italian businessman who is writing his confessions at the behest of his psychiatrist. Here are Zeno’s interminable attempts to quit smoking, his courtship of the beautiful yet unresponsive Ada, his unexpected–and unexpectedly happy–marriage to Ada’s homely sister Augusta, and his affair with a shrill-voiced aspiring singer. Relating these misadventures with wry wit and irony, and a perspicacity at once unblinking and compassionate, Zeno’s Conscience is a miracle of psychological realism. (Source: Goodreads)

Title: Arturo’s Island
Author: Elsa Morante

Synopsis: 

On a small Island in the Tyrrhenian Sea there lives a boy as innocent as a seabird. Arturo’s mother is dead; his father away. Black-clad women care for him, give him the freedom to come and go as he likes. Then the father returns with a new wife, Nunziata, a girl barely older than Arturo. At first hatred and contempt are all the boy feels for his stepmother. In time, Arturo and Nunziata re-create the tragedy and passion that are as old as the history of men and women. (Source: Goodreads)