Лучшие книги Джорджо Бассани

Роман «Сад Финци-Контини», опубликованный в 1962 году, стал вершиной творчества итальянского писателя, поэта и историка литературы Джорджо Бассани (1924–2000). Он принес автору европейскую известность и был удостоен престижной итальянской премии Виареджо. В 1971 году известный итальянский режиссер Витторио Де Сика снял по «Саду Финци-Контини» фильм, получивший премию Оскар. «Сад Финци-Контини» — это роман о неразделенной юношеской любви, трагичной вдвойне, потому что главный герой романа еврей и любит он еврейку, а живут они в фашистской Италии и впереди у них мрачная неизвестность…

Сборник новелл «В стенах города» — первая из книг итальянского писателя Джорджо Бассани (1916–2000), вошедших в цикл произведений под общим названием «Феррарский роман». Настоящее издание — пересмотренный автором вариант «Пяти феррарских историй» (1956). Для издательства «Текст» это уже вторая по счету книга Бассани: в 2008 году «Текст» выпустил роман «Сад Финци-Контини», который также является частью феррарского цикла. Неторопливое, размеренное повествование Бассани, словно идущее из глубины времен и памяти, по-настоящему завораживает: мир будто останавливается, и остается лишь искусная, тонкая вязь рассказа.

Classico della letteratura novecentesca, il romanzo narra in prima persona le vicende di un gruppo di giovani che, alla vigilia delle persecuzioni razziali contro gli ebrei, si incontra nel favoloso giardino della villa dei Finzi-Contini a Ferrara.

Ignari di quello che il futuro avrebbe loro riservato, fra partite di tennis e discussioni politiche, essi assistono alla nascita di amori delicati ed infelici, sullo sfondo degli orrori della Storia.

Dal romanzo è stato tratto il film omonimo, diretto da Vittorio De Sica.

В настоящем сборнике помещены переводы семи повестей, принадлежащих перу семи современных прогрессивных писателей Италии. Это представители среднего поколения итальянской литературы, начавшие свой творческий путь в период Сопротивления и в первые послевоенные годы.

'It was useless to think I'd ever be able to throw open the door behind which I was yet again hiding ... Not now. Not ever.'
School is a place of unspoken hierarchies and rivalries for a young teenage boy growing up in the provincial town of Ferrara. But as the everyday classroom and playground dramas are played out, they begin to reflect the disturbing undertones of 1930s Italy, and the narrator realizes that being Jewish means he will always be excluded. The fourth book in Bassani's Romanzo di Ferrara cycle, Behind the Door is a luminous portrayal of childhood friendship and the loss of innocence.

A new translation of Giorgio Bassani's haunting collection of short stories that evoke 1930s Ferrara, with an introduction by Ali Smith.
Isolated lives and a lost world are evoked in these memorable stories set in the Jewish-Italian community of 1930s Ferrara. A young man's unrequited love; a strange disappearance; a faded hotel; a lonely funfair; the smell of mown hay at the gates of the Jewish Cemetery - these vivid, impressionistic snapshots build a picture of life's brevity and intensity. Part of the sequence including The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles and The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, and featuring people and places from these novels, The Smell of Hay is told with a voice that is by turns intimate, ironic, elegiac and rueful.
This new translation contains two pieces, added by Bassani to his earlier collection, which have never appeared in English before.

'It struggled to keep itself aloft, to gain height. But then it suddenly gave up, and dropped as though it were breaking into many pieces'

Early on a cold Sunday morning, forty-five-year-old Edgardo Limentani gets up to join a shooting party in the countryside surrounding the town of Ferrara. As the day passes, he contemplates his past, his disappointments and how he has got here. Like the birds he shoots, he realizes, he is trapped, broken, waiting alone for the final coup de grâce. Then he sees a way out.

The fifth book in Bassani's Novel of Ferrara sequence, and his final novel, The Heron is a taut, poignant portrait of a middle-aged man's reckoning with his life.

Bassani's six classic books, collected for the first time in English as the epic masterwork they were intended to be.

Set in the northern Italian town of Ferrara before, during, and after the Second World War, The Novel of Ferrara brings together Bassani's six classic books, fully revised as a single volume by the author at the end of his life: Within the Walls, The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Behind the Door, The Heron and The Smell of Hay. These interlocking stories present a fully rounded world of unforgettable characters, memorializing not only the Ferrarese people, but the city itself, which assumes a character and a voice deeply inflected by the Jewish community to which the narrator belongs.

Vincitore premio Campiello 1969

Con crudo minimalismo "L'airone" racconta una giornata di caccia di Edgardo Limentani, di cui registra il montare lento e inesorabile del disgusto, del suo orrore sordo per l'esistenza. Siamo nell'inverno del 1947, nelle nebbie della Bassa, il risveglio di Edgardo è all'insegna del fastidio per ogni cosa. Il romanzo - in terza persona - accompagna Edgardo nei suoi spostamenti in quella che è l'ultima giornata della sua esistenza, indugiando nel descrivere con tecnica cinematografica i suoi gesti, anche minimi. Tra Ferrara, Codigoro e le rarefatte atmosfere del Po di Volano, Bassani, dopo la città e la campagna circostante, descrive una terra che vive anche sulle acque, in quello che è forse suo romanzo più esistenzialista. "L'airone" è il romanzo del dolore definitivo, di un malessere esistenziale onnicomprensivo che pervade ogni aspetto della realtà: l'individuo, i suoi affetti, le cose, la natura.

Into the insular town of 1930s Ferrara, a new doctor arrives. Fadigati is hopeful and modern, and more than anything wants to fit into his new home. But his fresh, appealing appearance soon crumbles when the townsfolk discover his homosexuality, and the young man he pays to be his lover humiliates him publicly.


As anti-Semitism spreads across Italy, the Jewish narrator of the tale begins to feel pity for the ostracized doctor, as the fickle nature of a community changing under political forces becomes clear. The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles is a gripping and tragic study of how lives can be destroyed by those we consider our neighbours.

Cinque storie. Quella di Lida Mantovani, ragazza madre che sposa un brav'uomo ma non riesce a dargli un figlio; quella del dottor Elia Corcos, solitario appassionato di scienza che mal sopporta la moglie; quella di Geo Josz, di ritorno dal lager; quella di Clelia Trotti, anziana militante socialista morta in carcere durante l'occupazione nazista. Il libro, qui riproposto nella prima edizione del 1956, fece vincere a Bassani il Premio Strega

Ferrara im Oktober 1929: Der Protagonist, ein sensibler, intelleigenter Sechzehnj?hriger, wechselt in der Oberstufe des Gymnasiums. Bei den neuen Mitsch?lern findet er keinen Anschlu? – bis Luciano in der Klasse auftaucht. Der Erz?hler sucht die Freundschaft dieses undurchschaubaren Jungen, der ihn zugleich fasziniert und abst??t.