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Last Summer in the City
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Check link for latest rating. ( 12,291 ratings, 1,781 reviews)
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Ideal for readers who appreciate literary fiction exploring themes of love, loneliness, and existential search. Fans of Italian literature and classics like The Great Gatsby or The Catcher in the Rye will find this evocative urban tale compelling.
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See moreThis cult classic of Italian literature is witty, romantic, tragic and endlessly quotable. It is the first novel by this award-winning author to be published in English. With a foreword by André Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name.
This cult classic of Italian literature is witty, romantic, tragic and endlessly quotable. It is the first novel by this award-winning author to be published in English.
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
A cult classic of Italian literature published in English for the first time, with a foreword by André Aciman, author of Call Me By Your Name.
In the late 1960s, Leo Gazzara left his family in Milan and moved to Rome for work. Soon unemployed, he has spent his time in an alcoholic haze, bouncing between hotels, bars, romantic entanglements, and the homes of his rich and well-educated friends. Rome is indifferent. Leo drifts, aimless and alone.
On the evening of his thirtieth birthday, he meets Arianna, a young woman who is both fragile and seductive. All night they drive the city in Leo's run-down Alfa Romeo, talking and talking. They eat brioche for breakfast, drink through the dawn, drive to the sea and back. A whirlwind beginning. This is the story of the year Leo fell in love and lost everything.
Intense, brief, witty and devastating, Last Summer in the City is a newly rediscovered classic of Italian literature. Translated into English for the first time by Howard Curtis, Gianfranco Calligarich's romantic and despairing debut is reminiscent of The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises and The Catcher in the Rye.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Praised as a masterpiece by Le Figaro and hailed as the most beautiful love story of the year by Il Giornale, the novel shines as a dazzling and sublime text of great beauty and sadness (Elle, Sud Ouest). Natalia Ginzburg highlights its desperate clarity in portraying the relationship between a man and a city. The New York Times Book Review lauds it as a time capsule of love and existential drift in a lost Rome, beautifully rendered in translation. Critics commend its heartbreaking, painful and ironic charm, with Andrew Martin calling it charming, decadent, and emotionally ruthless, evoking comparisons to Fitzgerald and Antonioni.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781529042290
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 07 July 2022
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Picador
Contributors:
- Translated by Howard Curtis
- Translated by Howard Curtis
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 13.0mm
Width: 129.0mm
Height: 195.0mm
Weight: 140g
Pages: 192
Collections
About the Author
Gianfranco Calligarich was born in Asmara, Eritrea, and grew up in Milan before moving to Rome where he worked as a journalist and screenwriter. He wrote many successful TV shows for Rai, the national public broadcasting company of Italy, and founded the Teatro XX Secolo in 1994. He is author of many novels, including La malinconia dei Crusich, which was the winner of the Viareggio Rèpaci Prize. Last Summer in the City is the first of his novels to be translated into English. Howard Curtis lives in Norwich, and has translated more than a hundred books from French, Italian and Spanish.
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