Лучшие книги Анны Марии Ортезе

«Nessuno scrittore ha insegnato all’Ortese questa callida acredine del discorrere, quella volatile furia e insieme quella macerazione labirintica che danno, fin dalle prime pagine, una letizia aspra, inquieta, insonne e insieme allucinatoria. Il linguaggio letterario è l'ultima e definitiva forma di incantamento, di carmen, l'ultima formula che agisce e costringe l'inesistente a esistere; e l'incantesimo dell'Iguana, appunto, agisce. Volendo, si può chiamare ‘romanzo' questo libro; ma forse è inutile. Ha qualcosa della fiaba, e insieme della ballata, della filastrocca, dell'incubo, del sogno, del delirio; appunto, è un incantesimo che agisce». - Giorgio Manganelli

A stunning classic set in Italy’s most vibrant and turbulent metropolis – Naples – in the immediate aftermath of World War Two. These lively and superbly written stories helped inspire Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. Ortese’s work was also championed by Italo Calvino, who was her Italian editor.

The stories and reportage collected in this volume form a powerful portrait of ordinary lives, both high and low, family dramas, love affairs, and struggles to pay the rent, set against the crumbling courtyards of the city itself, and the dramatic landscape of Naples Bay.

At the end of the eighteenth century, a prince, a sculptor, and a wealthy merchant arrive in Naples from Flanders. They visit a celebrated glover, a widower with his two youngest daughters, Elmina and Teresa, still living at home with him. The visitors find themselves strangely drawn to Elmina in particular, maybe because she is so silent, burdened it would seem with a mysterious sorrow. Although it is the sculptor who is successful in obtaining her hand in marriage, it is the prince -- aided by the necromantic skills of his friend the Polish duke -- who with the passage of time pieces together, through the nexus of lies and half-truths, the tragic story of the young woman and of the caged linnet, at once victim and tyrant, that must bring despair to all who seek to befriend it.In the stark contrast between the transparent light of Naples and the dark forests of the north, still the haunt of elves and will-o-the-wisps, Anna Maria Ortese weaves her narrative with a dazzling sleight of hand, leaving the reader under the spell, of her enchantment.